 श्री गणेशाय नमः

Introduction
Whether our pursuits are worldly or religious, ultimately
they have to culminate in the realization of the Self. When
you pursue the world for the sake of happiness, you will
finally discover that happiness in yourself, and when you
pursue religion in search of God, you will ultimately discover
that God as your own true Self. Therefore, atma-vicāra, self-
inquiry, is the summum bonum of all human pursuits.
The glory of Bhagavān Ramana Maharshi is that he
focused his attention on Self-inquiry as the means of
realization and freedom from the bondage of saṁsāra, the life
of becoming. This was at a time when whole India was
preoccupied with rituals, and the religion was focused
predominantly on ceremonies and mythology. At that time, he
was almost a lone voice calling for focus on Self-inquiry.
Later his voice brought this vision into clear focus.
People used to throng around Ramana Maharshi because
he was a sage, a saintly person. Indian society has regard for
saintly persons. It reveres those who are renunciates or the
saintly persons – not for any particular reason, it just does
that. This is not restricted to any particular religion. Even
saintly people who are non-Hindus are revered in India. It is
not so much as the religion, but rather the saintliness that
draws the attention of people.
They revered Ramana Maharshi and they gave him bhikṣā,
alms, and that was the end of it. People do not go beyond that
− they worship and do a namaskāra, prostration, and move on.
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Ramana Maharshi also was not the one to bring himself into
spotlight. He was so contented in his abidance in the Self that
he would not come forward and say, 'I am a jñānī, a wise
person.' In fact, whoever declares that he is a jñānī is indeed
not a jñānī because it is due to the ego to say so. There is no
wisdom in egotism. Who knew this better than Ramana
Maharshi? He lived in his cave, never going out even for
bhikṣā because people came to know about him and were
placing food by his cave. He did not even need to go around,
stayed in his cave and ate the simple bhikṣā that was offered.
He was ātma-niṣṭha, abiding in Atman, and he was a kind of
living God.
The meeting of Ramana Maharshi and Gaṇapati Muni
He remained abiding in the Self, until one day a great
scholarly person Gaṇapati Muni came to see him. Muni
means one who contemplates upon the truth. Generally
people go on contemplating upon the affairs of the body-
mind. We get so much caught up in the concerns of the body-
mind that we are not left with any more energy to
contemplate on anything meaningful or truthful, and thus all
our contemplative energy is dissipated. But a muni is the one
who contemplates upon higher things and rises beyond the
concerns of the body-mind. These concerns will be there
forever, at least as long as a body-mind lasts. It is somewhat
like wanting to take a bath in the ocean and waiting for the
waves to subside − it is never going to happen. Similarly, if
one thinks that 'when all the affairs of the body-mind are
taken care of, I will get into Self-inquiry,' this will never
happen. You have to leave behind the concerns of the body-
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mind, and go beyond. One who does that is a contemplative
person, and is called a muni.
Gaṇapati Muni was such a person. He was a great scholar
of Sanskrit and can be counted among great poets such as
Vālmīki, Kālidāsa, and others. His Sanskrit poetry is
marvelous and his understanding of the Vedas, including the
Upanishads, was par excellence. His poetry was so beautiful
that the scholars of Varanasi gave him the title 'Kāvyakanṭha'
at a big function. Lord Śiva is called Nīlakanṭha because he
has blue tint in his throat. But Ganapati Muni has kāvya,
poetry, in his throat and therefore they called him
Kāvyakanṭha. You may be surprised to know that he was
Chief of the Congress party for the Madras province. This
was before independence. Eventually he gave up politics and
happened to visit Tiruvannamalai. There he heard people
talking about a swami, a maunī-swāmī, who didn‟t speak. It
seems that Ramana Maharshi did not speak a word for
seventeen long years. How much inner space he must have
had to remain silent so long! We do not know how to keep
quiet for even seventeen minutes.
Gaṇapati Muni approached him to pay his respects, and
that was the first time that Bhagavān Ramana Maharshi
spoke. Something in Gaṇapati Muni attracted him to speak,
and so he spoke and it continued like a torrent as long as he
lived. He first had silence and then took to speech for the
benefit of people. Gaṇapati Muni told the people, 'You have a
jñānī (realized person) in your midst and you know only to
give alms? You must learn from him!' In this way a rapport
developed between the two, like that between Śrī
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Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. Ramana Maharshi
spoke and wrote in Tamil and Telugu, and so Gaṇapati Muni
translated his teachings into Sanskrit. Sat-darśanam is one
such text.
The text of Sad-darśanam
Sad-darśanam is a condensed form of the sixth chapter of
Chāndogya Upaniṣad. Sat is another name for Brahman and
darśanam means realization, so the name of the text means
the 'realization of Brahman.' The original forty verses were in
Tamil and also in Telugu, both written by Ramana Maharshi
with his own hand. These forty verses (and four verses of
prayer) cover the entire śāstra of Self-knowledge, dealing
with one and only one Reality. What 'is' is the Reality, not
what appears. Many things appear but what 'is' is the Reality,
and It is One. The original title of the text in Tamil was
Ulladu Narbadu, 'The Reality in Forty Verses.'
Gaṇapati Muni translated them into Sanskrit. In addition,
there is a prayer of two verses, and two concluding verses, so
now we have a total of forty four verses. This is advaita, non-
duality. You have to know that reality. In forty verses,
Ramana Maharshi conveys the essence of that reality and its
realization.
This Sanskrit text is an amazing composition. The meter
and the words are perfect for the subject matter, which is pure
contemplation upon the reality. You just contemplate upon
the reality, which is called God, Brahman, Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, or
whatever name you may give to it. That is the truth and the
reality, and you have to contemplate upon it. These verses

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provide a marvelous opportunity to contemplate upon that
reality.
Darśanam – two kinds of seeing
There are two kinds of darśanam: in one kind, you open
the eyes and see a pot or a movie, or a deity in a temple.
Seeing the deity is called devatā-darśanam. But suppose you
go to a temple and have darśanam of the Lord, then you come
out of the temple and become unhappy for some reason or
another! Then once again you are a saṁsārī. All this proves is
that you had darśanam, but not the real one. If it is real
darśanam, you will not be unhappy anymore; you will
become free from sorrow. Real darśanam is mokṣa, liberation.
So seeing something is one kind of darśanam, and there is
another kind of darśanam. In this darśanam, you do not see
with the eyes open. You close the eyes and see – that is the
real darśanam. You close the eyes and watch the mind, and
the mind becomes quiet; it is a revelation. Making the mind
quiet is a big problem for people, so they want to know how
to quieten the mind. It is very simple: sit, be alert, close the
eyes, and watch the mind. The mind becoming quiet is called
darśanam. When you practice that meditation for a while, you
will get an insight that 'I am a witness of this mind,' which is a
flow of thoughts. Having that insight is the darśanam we are
talking about. It can be translated as 'seeing with the inner
eye.' There are two eyes, and this is the third eye. When it is
said that Śiva has a third eye, this is the meaning. If the third
eye opens, you are Śiva. If the third eye is not open, you are
the jīva. It is like a toggle switch: close the third eye, you are
the jīva; open the third eye, you are Īśvara. Seeing the truth
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with the third eye is called darśanam. The inner eye is called
jñāna-netra, the eye of wisdom. With that eye, you see,
meaning experience Sat, the reality or truth.
Sat – that which is
The truth, which we call Sat, is that which is. Usually, we
look at truth as what 'will be.' Now I am studying Vedanta
and I will know the truth in the future. If we take it this way,
then the truth is something in the future – truth is that which
the guru knows or what the śāstras teach. In saying this, you
have conveniently moved away from the truth. Now you do
not have any challenge left with you because you do not
encounter with the truth yourself.
That is not the truth. Truth is not in the past, buried in the
volumes of books; nor will it be in the future, to present itself
suddenly before you. That is not the definition of truth. The
definition of truth is that which is. Therefore you have to
investigate. Now you must find out what is. When? Now!
Where? Here! You have to investigate and find out yourself
because it will not come from books. Books are like the
pointing finger. If you want to see the moon, do you go to a
library and read books? You can do that: there is a book, a
very glossy, heavy book with photographs of the moon. There
is nothing wrong with that. The book will describe the moon
and you can get all that information. Then you can ask
somebody, and he will point out with his finger and you see
the moon. The book is śāstra, the finger is the guru, and you
see the moon. You have to reach the goal yourself. It is like
driving to New York and seeing the signboard saying '100
miles to New York.' If you stop the car and embrace that
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signboard, you will not reach New York; you will remain
where you are.
The point is that the truth is here and now. It is nowhere
else and nobody else can give you the truth. There is nothing
like giving or inheriting the truth. One can give or inherit
wealth and so on, but not the truth. You have to discover the
truth yourself. When you are hungry, you have to eat the
food. Someone else cannot do it for you. So challenge
yourself to see the truth. Seeing is knowing. You encounter
the truth here and now. That is sad-darśanam.
We do not see what is
The first thing to understand is that we do not see what is,
we see what we want to see. This happens all the time
because people are very subjective. All cognition is
recognition because it is based upon memory. What is is, but
you bring out the perceived object from your memory, project
it outside, and then recognize it. You are cognizing that which
is already cognized; it is 're-cognition.' Thus you ignore the
present by projecting your idea upon it. The object you see is
not the truth, it is a superimposition. It is not the truth, no
matter how many people have affirmed the reality of that
object. Truth is not determined based on sentiment. You must
be a light unto yourself: Atman is the sadguru. An outside
guru can only be a pointing finger. Nobody can give you truth
on a platter, it is not a thing to be given or taken. Truth is
something you have to discover in yourself.
Sat means the Being Absolute. That alone is. In its very
gross form, we call it pṛthivī, the earth. Waters, fire, wind,

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and space are the other four bhūtas. The word bhūta itself
comes from the root bhū, meaning that which is, and the
levels of grossness are the upādhi , conditioning, for Sat. At
the extreme gross level It is pṛthivī, and at the subtlest level It
is ākāśa, space. That is why we sense ākāśa and pṛthivī the
same way, except for the corresponding subtleness and
grossness. Pṛthivī is Sat with a certain conditioning, and ākāśa
is Sat conditioned differently. Then what is the unconditioned
Sat? You cannot see it or infer it, but still it is readily
accessible to you now and here as the innermost Self.
What is seen is a projection of the mind
You see the sun rising and setting: it is not the truth. You
see the stars twinkling: school children sing 'twinkle, twinkle
little star.' But they are neither little nor twinkling. So what
you see is not true and what is true you cannot see. First
reconcile yourself to this fact: what you see is not the truth. In
Sanskrit we say yaddṛśyaṁ tannāśyam, that which is seen is
subject to destruction, and thus unreal. Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad
says that the jagat is mithyā, unreal. Why? Dṛśyatvāt, because
it is seen.
The fact that you see something is proof enough to
disregard it as a projection of the mind and hence unreal. You
do not need any further proof. You see the rose, therefore the
rose is unreal. Why? Because you see it. What you cannot see
is Sat, the reality. But even though you cannot see it, it is
accessible because it is your own innermost being. If it is
outside, you cannot see it, touch it, or access it in any other
way. But because it is your own innermost being, you need
not touch it or see it; you can just be it.
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 You are not going to know the truth because truth is the
unknown and the unknowable. But you can be the truth, now
and here. Being the truth is euphemistically called 'knowing
the truth.' Bhagawan Ramana Maharshi says, sanniṣṭhā eva
saddarśanam, abiding in the truth is knowing the truth. This is
the topic of Sad-darśanam. In forty two verses, Ramana
Maharshi states the essence of that reality and its realization.
Before beginning, it is necessary to point out a few issues
or difficulties associated with the study of Vedānta because
people do get confused year after year. I sometimes wonder
that even the ācāryas do not make any effort to correct this
confusion. Therefore, the confusion remains and we come
across a paradoxical situation in which a person has been
studying Vedānta for years, yet we do not find any
transformation in the person. He or she remains very much a
saṁsārī. This situation is connected with the word darśana,
vision. You have to look at yourself and examine where you
have placed your identity.
Three obstacles in the study of Vedānta
Firstly, there is in life what we call karma, action. There is
action in everybody‟s life, but the point is whether you
identify yourself with that action. Any number of people
identify with karma, like a person who says, “I am an
engineer.” In saying so, he defines himself based on the
karma that he performs. It is the same with a physician, a
priest, or even a teacher. Anybody who calls himself a teacher
has already identified with a given action or activity. So you
have to look at yourself and ask if you are identifying
yourself with karma. If the answer is yes, then you are far
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from truth because karma is not your essential nature. Karma
is, but it does not define you. When you identify with karma,
you have already created a problem for yourself. Thus, karma
is one obstacle.
The second obstacle is belief. We have some beliefs in life;
who does not have a belief? In childhood we worshipped a
particular God, like Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, etc. Why are you
worshipping that God and not another God? Because the
parents worshipped that God, and we have a value for
following the parents. Another name for „following‟ is
„imitating.‟ The word „follow‟ sounds nice, but „imitate‟ does
not. But what we do is imitation. When my father worshipped
Lord Śiva, I noticed it – consciously and also unconsciously –
and ended up worshipping Śiva. Then they call it „tradition.‟
Therefore, we imitate in the name of tradition. We believe
exactly the way that someone else believed and call it
tradition. The word sounds very solid, but it is the dumbest
thing. Now we are fixed in it and cannot budge out.
Therefore, you have to look at yourself. Are you fixing
yourself in a belief? If you have already fixed yourself in a
belief, study of the Sad-darśanam is not for you because you
are not open for inquiry. Sad-darśanam is all about inquiry. I
am moving step-by-step here to finally arrive at darśanam.
Action is physical movement, while belief is the movement of
the mind. Then comes the intellect and we enter into a topic
called „knowledge.‟
Knowledge is the word that is used. Generally, knowledge
means a lot of information about a particular topic. All that
information is already there in the world, you acquire it from
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a teacher, and you hold it in your brain cells. Now you are an
educated person. You acquire a faculty of holding a lot of
knowledge in the brain cells and that empowers you. Using
that, you can get a job and make a career and so on. That is
called knowledge.
The limits of conceptual knowledge
When it comes to Vedānta, you want to exactly replicate
that, which is a problem. In fact, the expression „Self-
knowledge‟ itself could be very misleading unless you are
very careful about it. There is knowledge of mathematics,
knowledge of physics, knowledge of sociology, knowledge of
rituals, knowledge of this, knowledge of that, and finally
knowledge of Atman. If that is the way Self-knowledge is
understood, you have created a trap for yourself.
This is what happens: good-meaning students go to a
good-meaning teacher. The teacher holds a lot of information
about Atman, Brahman, world, God, Self, small self,
Universal Self, last birth, next birth, transmigration of the
soul, etc. You gather all that information and store in the
head. Here we use the word „tradition.‟ Why tradition?
Because the teacher gathered all this information from his
teacher, who, in his turn, gathered all the information from his
teacher, and so on. Every time you study a text of Vedānta, it
has come from such a tradition. Therefore, you hold all this
knowledge in the head and consider yourself a very
accomplished person. In this way, the study of Vedānta
becomes a self-fulfilling activity. It is like a chef who
prepares a very wonderful dish and feels very fulfilled, or a
sculptor who makes a nice sculpture and feels great, or a
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musician who sings a good song and feels very fulfilled as
everybody claps. Now somebody teaches Vedānta and feels
very fulfilled, and you study Vedānta and feel very fulfilled.
Such knowledge helps to embellish the brain cells with a
lot of wonderful information only. It makes you a good
scholar and a good speaker, but it does not help realize the
truth. Therefore, knowledge is not what darśanam means, so
you have to cross that barrier also. The knowledge that you
acquire in the name of Vedānta, knowledge which is the
embellishment of the brain cells and which you call a
tradition, is indeed traditional knowledge, conceptual
knowledge, nothing more. There is no realization in it.
When NASA sent a probe to Mars, it filmed the surface of
Mars, and beamed those images back to Earth. Now we know
how the surface of Mars looks. That is knowledge, purely
conceptual. Or we all know that Lord Śiva, married to
Parvati, stays on mount Kailās. That is knowledge, traditional
knowledge, but it is merely conceptual.
Such conceptual knowledge of Atman can help, provided
you take it in the right spirit and use in the right direction. But
more often than not, conceptual knowledge can and does
become a hindrance in the path of Self-realization. Therefore,
we have to cross these three barriers of action, belief, and
intellectual knowledge, and come to what is called darśanam.
Darśanam is not conceptual
Darśanam means seeing, realization, of the truth. All the
problems of life that we face are because of non-realization of
the truth. All problems of human existence are the direct
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outcome of ignorance of the truth. You should be innocent,
but not ignorant. Innocence is divinity, but ignorance is a sin.
People are hurt endlessly only because of their ignorance of
the truth, whereas realization of the truth – not conceptual
knowledge – liberates.
We need darśanam of sat because essentially we want two
things in life: peace and happiness. When you realize the
truth, all the issues and problems of life are replaced by peace
and happiness. The truth is that which pervades inside and
outside because it is beyond all divisions, that which appears
in all forms and names and is mistaken as many names and
forms. It is that which is in you, which is you; it is what you
really want. When you rise above all these barriers and abide
in your true Self, you realize sat as the essence of all that
appears and the essence of your own existence also. You
realize sat, pure being, as your own true Self and you are
liberated from the bondage of this saṁsāra. That is sad-
darśanam.
This Sanskrit text is an amazing composition. The meter
and the words are perfect for the subject matter, which is for
pure contemplation upon the reality. You just contemplate
upon the reality, which is called God, Brahman, Rāma, Kṛṣṇa,
or whatever name you may give. These forty two verses
provide a marvelous opportunity to contemplate upon that
reality.

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 Verse 1

सत्प्रत्ययााः ि िं नु ििहाय सन्तिं हृद्येष चिन्तारिहतो हृदाख्याः ।

थिं स्मरामस्तममेयमे िं तस्य स्मृितस्तत्र दृढै ि िनष्ठा ।। 1
satpratyayāḥ kiṁ nu vihāya santaṁ
hṛdyeṣa cintārahito hṛdākhyaḥ,
kathaṁ smarāmastamameyamekaṁ
tasya smṛtistatra dṛḍhaiva niṣṭhā. 1
sat-pratyayāḥ – cognitions of existent things; kiṁ nu – can
be; vihāya – without; santam – the Being; hṛdi – in the heart;
eṣaḥ – this; cintārahitaḥ – free of thought; hṛd-ākhyaḥ – called
the heart; katham – how; smarāmaḥ – can (we) contemplate;
tam – that; ameyam – immeasurable; ekam – one; tasya – of
that; smṛtiḥ – contemplation; tatra – in That; dṛḍhā – firm;;
niṣṭhā – abidance; eva – alone.
Can there be cognitions of existent things without
the Being Absolute (as their substratum)? This Being
named as hṛt is in the heart itself, free from thought.
How can we contemplate That One immeasurable
Being Absolute? Its contemplation is firm abidance in It
alone.
Two kinds of seeing
The topic is Sat, 'what is.‟ Darśana means 'seeing' or
'realization.' There are two kinds of seeing. For example, I
show a wet ball of clay to someone. He says, 'That is clay.'
Then I manipulate a little bit and show it again, and he says,
'That is a pot.' What is this? Just now you said it is clay, and

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then I manipulate a little bit and it becomes something else?
How does it become something else? Or I take a piece of
paper, you call it 'paper,' and I manipulate it by rolling it up a
bit. Then I ask, what is this, and you say, 'It is a cone.' But
just now you said 'paper,' now it is 'cone.' Then if I unroll it
again and ask, you say 'paper.' This is the first kind of seeing.
In fact, you are not really seeing at all, you are just staring. As
one mahātmā said, 'People do not know how to see, they only
stare.' You do not see because you are saying that paper has
become cone, and cone has become paper. Paper is gone and
cone has come, cone is gone and paper has come. Did
anything go and did anything come? Is there any such
movement there, did anything change? No, nothing changed
but the words. You changed from one word to the other,
whereas the thing remains the same. You do not have two
separate things; you have only one thing there. The operation
of the vocal cords has no connection with what is. What is, is.
Therefore you should learn to see, not to just stare.
The second kind of seeing, seeing with the inner eye, is
what we call insight. When you see with the inner eye, that is
called the eye of Lord Śiva. This inner eye is with you. You
are Lord Śiva if you open that eye, otherwise it remains
hidden. When you are able to see with that inner eye, it is
knowledge that is called darśana. When you see with that
inner eye, what you see is sat,'what is.' That is the meaning of
sad-darśanam.
The nature of cognition
As the name of the text suggests, the teaching begins with
sat. These are very contemplative verses and the words are
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deceptively simple. For example, a text of this kind
traditionally begins with a prayer. But here, contemplation
upon sat is the greatest prayer and so the text begins with the
word sat-pratyayāḥ, which means cognitions of existence (of
things). When you cognize a thing like a pot, how do you
express the cognition? You say, 'pot is.' That 'is' is important.
The cognition now has two elements: 'is-ness' and 'pot-
ness.' Suppose you take another cognition, namely 'flower is.'
Now flower has come and pot is gone. But what about 'is'?
Suppose 'is' is gone. Then pot is gone and nothing else is there
either. This is what we call śūnya, void. If 'is' is gone, you
enter into void. But then you have to say, 'void is,' which is a
contradiction. Therefore, if 'is' is gone, everything is gone, but
if pot is gone, only pot is gone and something else connects to
the isness.
'Pot' is a name. The name goes along with a shape, of
course – you cannot separate them. Just try to think of a pot
without any word, in English or any other language,
corresponding to that pot. Can you think of a pot without the
word pot? You cannot. And if I say the word 'pot,' you cannot
help but think of its meaning. That is why name and form are
always together. Wherever there is a form, physical or mental,
in waking or dream state, that form goes with a name.
Therefore the cognition has these two elements in it: 'is-ness'
and a name with a form.
No cognition without the Being
Now Ramana Maharshi asks a question: can you have a
cognition without is-ness? Without the Being Absolute? It is a

16
rhetorical question. A cognition is sat-pratyaya because it is
always about something that is. Without that sense of is-ness,
you cannot have a cognition. Can you take away the is-ness
from the cognition and keep only nāma-rūpa? In other words,
can you think of a pot without associating it with is-ness?
That is not possible. In the case of gold ornaments, for
example, you cannot think of an ornament without thinking of
gold. Whatever ornament you think of, it is necessarily
golden; goldenness is its sum and substance. So whenever
you have ornament-buddhi, it is necessarily associated with
gold-buddhi. Buddhi means cognition.
That is the illustration; now let us come back to our
original point. When you have the cognition of pot, we have
sad-buddhi, 'is-cognition,' or 'is-ness,' as an invariable or
integral part of it. Without is-ness you cannot have pot
cognition. It is like a blind man searching for something,
stretching his hand. He is searching for is-ness. His hand
touches something and he says, 'Something is here.' It begins
with 'is' and then he explores the predicate or characteristic of
that 'is.' It is a flower or a pot or whatever. The point is that he
senses the is-ness, and then he adds the characteristic features
to that is-ness. The features are nāma-rūpa, name and form.
Is-ness comes first, then name and form
In the case of a blind man is-ness comes first and nāma-
rūpa comes latter, as it is nothing but a circumstance of the is-
ness. Whether you touch or see, it is only a change in the
sense organ; both are still cognitions. In seeing, which comes
first, is-ness or nāma-rūpa? Here also, is-ness comes first and
nāma-rūpa comes later. In the case of a blind man‟s cognition
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of the pot, you can see the distinction clearly because there is
a small gap between the two. He has to establish the nature of
that is-ness with touch. He does not have the advantage of
sight, and therefore he takes his time to establish the nāma-
rūpa.
You first sense the being, then project the nāma-rūpa
It is the same in the case of eyesight, but there the gap is
very small. It is almost instantaneous: you sense the is-ness
and then its character. But there is always a gap, but you are
not conscious of it. For example, a person who does not know
a pot will still be able to sense the being without adding the
name 'pot' to that. A person can sense the pot as 'pot' only if
he already knows 'pot' because he is sensing the is-ness and
then superimposing the nāma-rūpa. To use another
illustration, suppose you see a young man and you say, 'He is
my son.' First you sense a young man and then project 'my
son.'
The point is that by focusing on the conditionality, you
miss the is-ness. This is what is called nāma-rūpa-buddhi. It is
like a young lady who goes to purchase an ornament: Her
focus is on the ornament, so she misses the golden part of it.
Finally she likes one particular ornament, say a necklace, and
selects it. But her mother is also by her side, and the mother
asks the jeweler, 'What carat gold is it?' From this question, it
is clear where their respective focuses lie. One is focused on
nāma-rūpa and the other on is-ness. A person who focuses on
nāma-rūpa is a worldly person. He is far away from truth and
he can never realize it in his lifetime. Shifting the focus from

18
nāma-rūpa to the 'being,' (is-ness), is called sad-darśanam,
which is the main theme of the text.
Focus must be on sat, not on nāma-rūpa
We are attached to the names and forms in the world.
Aversion is also to name and form only. As long as we are
engrossed in attachment or aversion, the names and forms
appear real. You cannot hang on to nāma-rūpa and at the
same time maintain focus on sat. You cannot have one foot in
nāma-rūpa and another in the sat so that you secure both. As
they say, you cannot have the cake and eat it too. Knowing
the truth requires childlike innocence. It is enough to shift the
focus away from nāma-rūpa; what remains is sat alone. When
you take away the ornament-cognition, what remains is only
gold-cognition.
Nāma-rūpa is the past, being (or is-ness) is the present
In this situation, what is the present and what is the past?
Nāma-rūpa is the past and is-ness is the present. As we focus
on the name and form, we annihilate the present with the past.
Being (is-ness) is the truth and is the present, whereas the
nāma-rūpa comes from the mind – a mind with the
impressions from the past. The pot-ness, i.e. the name and
form, come from the mind and we superimpose the past
vāsanā, impression, upon the present „being.‟ There cannot be
any cognition without sensing the being, because without
sensing the being, there cannot be any superimposition of
nāma-rūpa. Being is one and nāma-rūpas are many. The
conditionality varies, while being remains the same. But to a

19
deluded mind, the variation of the conditionality makes the
being appear as many.
There is a chemical called aqua regia, which dissolves
gold. Suppose this chemical were a live entity, Ms. Aqua
Regia. Suppose she visits a jewelry shop. Will she see the
ornaments? No. She would see gold all through. You cannot
have an ornament without gold, and you cannot have the
cognition without the all-pervading being. This is the science
of reality, whereas the world is a collection of nāma-rūpas.
Being is the fundamental underlying presence
There is a mountain, there is a river, there is a tree, there is
a cow, there is a human being, and there is a bird, etc. I would
add one more word and say, 'There is mountain presence,
river presence,' and so on. The added word 'presence' brings
the vision closer to the heart. A mountain is presence. You
want to name it a mountain, but it is presence. A bird is
presence. The sun is presence, a blade of grass is presence.
Everything is presence, and you cannot have the cognition of
various objects without that fundamental underlying presence.
Santaṁ vihāya, If you put that presence aside, can you have
different cognitions? No. It is all one presence.
Putting awareness to work
When you are walking, you think you see something; an
old maple tree and another maple tree, a young one, and a
third, a different tree. This is what you see when you are
thinking. Suppose you move from thinking to awareness. Just
go beyond thinking: be aware, do not think. You need not
think all the time. I am not telling you to stop thinking! If you
20
do not think, you cannot work. I am telling you that you do
not need to think always. While walking, why should you
think? Give some rest to the mind and put your awareness to
work. It means that just be aware. Putting awareness to work
is like a solvent which dissolves names and forms. Then you
are aware not of an old maple tree and a young maple tree and
a third tree; you are simply aware of a tree and a tree and a
tree. Then the idea of 'tree' also drops because tree is also a
name with a form. Then you are aware of the presence and
the presence and the presence. This is darśanam, the insight.
It is all presence, just presence.
Without that presence, how can you have trees, or
mountains, or rivers, etc.? How can you have all these names
and forms without that presence? The sat-pratyayas,
cognitions, are many, but the underlying presence is one and
the same: one without the second. Can you have this
multifarious world without that underlying presence? That is
a rhetorical question.
The presence is sat, reality
Thus, with one rhetorical question the Maharishi takes the
student away from the multiplicity of names and forms into
the realm of the higher presence. Another name for that
presence is Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, God, or some other name. Or you
may drop all these names and simply call it Reality. That is
what the Upaniṣadic sages have done. They did not give any
name because a particular name makes It sectarian. Therefore,
they just left it nameless. But for the purpose of
communication, they have used a name that is not really a
name. They called it Sat, which translates as 'Presence.'
21
 Who is Śrī Kṛṣṇa? People say that He is the son of Devakī
and Vasudeva. But Śrī Kṛṣṇa himself said avajananti māṃ
mūḍhā mānuṣīṃ tanumāśritam, 'People, being deluded, think
that I am a human being' (Gita, 9-11). If he is not a human
being, what is he? He is para bhāva, the Supreme Being. You
look at the bhūtas, the five elements, such as pṛthivī. Pṛthivī,
the earth, is presence. You sense what is under your feet. It is
the presence, sensed as the solid state pṛthivī. When you sense
āpaḥ, water, again it is the presence perceived as the liquid
state. The presence in the gaseous state is vāyu, the presence
in the state of energy is agni, the presence that is expansive is
ākāśa. It is all one presence, and Śrī Kṛṣṇa says, 'I am that
presence.' Therefore, through sat-pratyaya we arrive at the
presence, one without the second, which is the Reality
underlying the entire creation.
The presence has no location
Where is that presence? If I am here, and there is presence
everywhere else, then the presence is not all-inclusive
because I am standing apart from it. If everything is the great
presence, but I am standing apart from it, then it is not a
source of joy for me. In fact, the presence, which is the
underlying reality of the entire creation, is in you in the heart.
Maharshi offers a location where you can contemplate upon
that presence, namely, the heart.
If there are thoughts raging in the heart, I will not feel any
presence. That is why you have to put an end to these
thoughts, cintā rahita, because the thoughts cover up the
presence. Cintā also means concerns, worries, the general

22
sense of insecurity and dissatisfaction. These have become a
veil over that presence, which is inside you as well as outside.
In fact there is only presence. There is no outside and
inside, there is no up or down. What is 'up' and what is 'down'
is just a conventional usage. Similarly there is no inside-
outside. There is still a notion or feeling of inside-outside. We
go along with it for a while before knocking it down, like I
went along with the idea of 'pot' to begin with. So even
though we know that there is no inside-outside, let us express
this way for the time being.
The mind covers the presence
Therefore the presence is in you, but you say, 'I do not feel
it.' This means that you have crafted your mind to act as a
veil, which covers up the presence. The truth is that you do
not need any help from the mind to know the truth. It is
enough if the mind simply does not get in the way. So be
cintā-rahita, drop your worries and concerns, and abide in
thoughtlessness. Please note that thoughtlessness is not
mindlessness, so we should not confuse between the two. A
quiet mind is not a blank mind. Abiding as cintā-rahita, giving
up all your concerns, remain quiet. Then what you feel in you
as 'I am' is indeed an expression of that presence.
Hṛd means Brahman

The Maharshi gives a name, hṛd, Heart, to that presence.

Suppose I want to say, 'this hṛd.' In Sanskrit, ayam means
'this.' In Sanskrit you can put the words in any order, so you
can say ayam hṛd or hṛd ayam, both mean the same. By

23
coupling these two words, we get the expression hṛdayam,
which means Heart, and also means 'this Being.' In Māṇdūkya
Upaniṣad (2), we see the statement ayam ātmā brahma,
meaning this Atman is indeed Brahman. This nomenclature
and the etymology of hṛd comes from Chāndogya Upaniṣad
in a section called dahara-vidyā.1 That hṛdayam is the
Presence, and that is God. We have to contemplate upon that
God. But how to contemplate? How can one be thoughtless
and still contemplate on that God? It is a paradox, which the
Maharshi addresses in the second half of the verse.
Finding the origin of the universe
The universe looks material when you look at it with a
gross mind. For example, if you calculate the volume
occupied by the matter of the solar system comprising the sun
and the nine planets, and also calculate the total volume of the
space in which the sun and nine planets are located, the result
is that matter of the solar system occupies 0.1 percent of the
total space. It is actually even less than 0.1 percent. So if we
say it is a material universe, where is the matter in it? Most of
it is space. Similarly, if you take the volume of an atom, once
again we arrive at this conclusion that an atom is entirely
empty except for 0.000001 percent of the volume. So an atom
is also virtually empty.
What you call a table, a physicist knows that 99.9999999
percent of it is space. There is only a very small percentage of

1
sa vā eṣa ātmā hṛdi tasyaitadeva niruktaṁ hṛdi ayam iti
tasmāddhṛdayam (This self which is such surely exists in the heart. Of that
this is verily the derivation: It is in the heart; therefore that is called the
heart.) (Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 8.3.3) (Transl.: Swami Gambhirananda)
24
material, and they are still struggling to find out what that
material is. You feel it is solid not because it is solid, but
because there is the sensation of solidity. And it visually
appears solid only because the resolving power of your eye is
not large enough. An electron microscope can resolve it to a
large extent, but the eyesight cannot. Thus the universe is not
as material as we believe it to be – there is far more space
than material in it. Material is gross and space is very subtle,
and it is a law that the gross originates from the subtle.
What is the origin of this universe? This is the study that
we call cosmology. I am not suggesting that there are ready-
made answers. Here we enter into a realm in which there are
no definite answers. It is only in the middle zone that things
are definitive. In this realm, the value is more in the question
than in any answer. It is indeed said, yato vāco nivartante,
aprāpya manasā saha.1 You reach a realm in which the mind‟s
conceptual power fails. Mind has the power to visualize many
things. For example, you can never physically measure the
distance from here to the sun; you can only visualize it with
the mind. But mind cannot even visualize the distance to the
nearest star, which is light-years away. It is an astronomical
figure that can be indicated, but cannot be visualized with the
mind.
What is the origin of the universe?
This is the question that has engaged philosophers as well
as scientists thro‟ centuries. Scientists rely on experimental

1
That from which words along with the mind return unable to reach.'
Taittirīya Upaniṣad, 2.4.1
25
data to support their hypotheses. Philosophers have their own
vision, their experience of life and exploration into the inner
reality as well as the external nature. Scientists rely on the
outer data, whereas philosophers rely on the inner data. A
stage comes when the inner-outer division vanishes.
Scientists say the universe has originated from Big Bang, a
huge explosion of primordial ylem. That ylem is neither
matter, nor energy, as we understand the matter and energy
today. That explosion was not random. It seems to be guided
by some Intelligence, it was an intelligent explosion, because
there were as if 'rules written' into that explosion and the
outcome is the cosmos, not chaos. Therefore, this is an
'intelligent universe.' The astrophysicist Fred Hoyle talked of
'intelligent cosmic control.' If that ylem is neither matter nor
energy as we know it, and if there was neither space nor time
before the explosion, then there is no word to express it. It is
the unknown and unknowable!
The origin is sat
That intelligence is what we call caitanya. We also call it
'what is' to begin with. This 'what is,' which is neither matter
nor energy, is the origin of the universe of matter and energy.
'What is,' is Existence itself, and we call it sat. As the seers
tell us, sadeva somyedamagra āsīdekamevādvitīyam.1 It is
That which the sense organs cannot perceive, the mind cannot
conceive. It is nameless, formless. Also, 'what is' is
intelligence, and therefore cit, though fundamentally It is sat.

1
'In the beginning, this one alone was there, the one without the
second' (Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 6.2.1)
26
Sat is more fundamental because it is the being which shines
as the knowing, in which there is no doing. That is the Atman.
Sat is primordial. The Big Bang theory runs parallel to this
philosophical vision. They do not meet, and they need not
meet; they have their own ambit and approach.
Scientists and philosophers arrive at the same conclusion
on some basic things without consulting each other. For
example, there was no space and no time before the big bang.
The question 'When did it explode?' is wrong because the idea
of time came only after the explosion. The explosion gives
rise to gaseous clouds, which condense to stars. Some burning
masses come out of these stars and cool down to become
planets. As the planet earth further cools, water forms, life
evolves, and in that life there is mind. Therefore, mind comes
much later. When mind is there, a human mind, then there is
time.
Time requires a human mind
A human mind must be present for time to be there.
Imagine that there are no human beings on the earth, but
every other form of life is there, all flora and fauna;
everything except humans. Then somebody comes from
Mars. Will he find anything called time in operation on
Earth? The answer is no. Time is entirely a product of the
human mind. Space is also a mental category. Space-time,
which is four dimensional – three dimensions of space and
one of time – comes after the Big Bang. Similarly, we say that
Brahman is spaceless and timeless. When jagat, the world,
originates from Brahman, space and time are there as part of
that jagat. Brahman means limitless. It is not a positive name,
27
but rather indicative of the negation of any limitation. If you
want a positive name, you can call it sat, the 'presence.'
Gold remains gold in spite of multiple ornaments that we
imagine of it. We imagine that gold is the origin of multiple
ornaments. If gold were to be asked, 'Oh gold, you are
manifesting as so many ornaments!' Gold would reply, 'I
don‟t know anything about that.' The thing called ornament is
entirely in the mind, and gold has nothing to do with it. Gold
is simply what is. Brahman and jagat have a similar
relationship. Gold remains gold in spite of the
superimposition of many ornaments by the human mind.
Similarly, Brahman remains Brahman, sat remains sat, in
spite of our taking it for the universe. So where is this sat?
That is not the question. The real question is where it is not?
Philosophical exploration begins with you
You have to start the exploration nearer, not farther. In
religion we begin with the farther, and in philosophy we
begin with the nearer. In religion, the whole description
begins with 'there is Lord Vishnu in Vaikuṇṭha, etc.' In
philosophy, it begins with you, 'I am.' Everything else comes
later: first and foremost, 'I am.' Now God must be in you,
must be connected to you, and even the universe is connected
to you. God who pervades the universe necessarily pervades
you also.
Therefore that Sat, God, is in the heart. Whether you call it
the truth or reality or God or Sat, you begin the exploration in
the nearer, not farther. God is everywhere: in Vaikuṇṭha,
heaven, in a temple, and so on, but most importantly, God is

28
the nearest to you. God is in you, in the heart. Now the goal
before us is to contemplate upon that Reality.
Thoughts can be directed either towards the world or
towards reality
Why should we contemplate upon the reality? You cannot
give such an answer e.g. it brings puṇya, virtue. That is not
what philosophy is about because we have already seen that
puṇya, virtue, binds as much as pāpa, sin. A poor man is
unhappy because of his poverty and a rich man is unhappy
because of his riches. If you come across a rich man who is
happy, he is happy in spite of his riches. Therefore both are
binding: poverty binds one as much as riches. Pāpa binds one
and puṇya also binds one. Puṇya is a golden shackle, while
pāpa is an iron shackle. An old woman living in a mud hut
and a queen living in a palace both have the similar cycle of
pleasure and pain.
Then the question remains, why should I contemplate upon
the reality? The answer is: the flow of thoughts in the mind is
of two kinds. Thoughts can be directed towards the world, or
they can be directed towards reality. The world is unreal. You
should not have any confusion about that. If you do not
contemplate upon reality, you end up contemplating upon the
world. There are only two paths for the flow of mind, there is
no third path. And when you contemplate upon the world, you
pick up sorrow and fear. Therefore, now you choose which
flow of thoughts is preferable: thoughts of the unreal world or
thoughts of the real sat? Obviously we prefer contemplation
upon reality.

29
The dangers of contemplating upon the world
When you think of the world more and more, you end up
believing that the world is real. For someone who owns no
stocks, the stock market is not real; it is all virtual. But for the
person who has a stake in it, it is very real. For example,
when 9/11 happened, the stock market crashed and quite a
few people became paupers. Where did this money go? It was
told, 'It is virtual money, it does not go anywhere.' I cannot
figure out this virtual money, but this nicely fits into our
philosophy.
When you contemplate upon something continuously, it
appears real to you. Suppose you go on thinking somebody is
your enemy; it appears real. In fact, he is not your enemy, you
are just imagining it. He does not even know you are thinking
about him, and he may not have any ill feelings towards you.
He would come and apologize to you if he knew, but he does
not know and he has nothing to do with it. But you are
agitated about the enemy. The enemy is only in your mind,
yet appears very real. That is the power and mystery of
imagination that it appears very real. Then you come up with
justifications to prove that the enmity is real, or in other
words that the world is real. This is the danger of
contemplating upon the world all the time. You have to
understand that the world is dream-like. Therefore the
desirable mode of thinking is contemplation upon reality.
How to contemplate upon reality
But how to contemplate? The Maharshi asks, how can we
contemplate upon that immeasurable (inconceivable), one

30
without a second? There is a problem in contemplation of the
real. The Reality is one without a second. In order to think,
there must be duality – the one who thinks and the object of
thought. How are you going to think of the one without the
second? Secondly, the Reality is ameya, inconceivable. Śrī
Kṛṣṇa describes Atman with similar expression,
anāśino‟prameyasya, the Atman is indestructible and
inconceivable (Gita, 2-18).
We talk of two pramāṇas, i.e. the means of knowing,
perception and inference. One can talk of other pramāṇas like
upamāna, arthāpatti, anupalabdhi,1 etc., but they can all be
included in inference. Ultimately it all boils down to this:
mind plus sense organs are pratyakṣa, perception; mind
without the sense organs is anumāna, inference. The Reality
is not something that can be perceived. We cannot infer it
also. The pramāṇas intrinsic to the human being are out of
question because the reality is aprameya, inconceivable (Gita,
2-18).
Śāstra as an external pramāṇa
Then there is śāstra, scripture, another pramāṇa.
Sometimes you may not be able to see or even infer
something, but somebody tells you. Śabda, in which words
are involved, is an external pramāṇa. That is why you need
śāstra, scripture, ācārya, teacher, upadeśa, teaching, and so
on. This external pramāṇa helps where the other two fail. It is
like going to a doctor to get a prescription because you cannot

1
upamāna - illustration, arthāpatti – presumption, anupalabdhi – non-
perception
31
write that prescription yourself. You need somebody to tell
you what medicine you have to take. Similarly, when your
perception and inference do not work, there is śabda, and
śāstra is the śabda-pramāṇa. That is why śāstra and ācārya
always go together, like the prescription and the doctor. This
is śabda-pramāṇa.
Śastra eliminates an imagined superimposition
If śabda can grasp the Reality, then It cannot be aprameya.
Sri Śaṅkara clears this in the bhāṣya. Avidyā-
adhyāropamātranivartakatvena pramāṇatvam, śāstra is a
pramāṇa only by throwing away of superimpositions that are
imagined due to ignorance. It is like cutting or polishing a
diamond: when you cut or polish a diamond, you do not
produce the diamond; cutting or polishing only removes the
impurities that come from the mine. The human mind has all
kinds of imaginations and superimpositions regarding the
reality. People think that reality is matter, and therefore śabda
says asthūlam anaṇu, it is neither gross nor subtle. In this
way, śabda only clears our understanding.
Words do not grasp the reality and that is why it is said
that yato vāco nivartante, words bounce back from the reality
(Taittirīya Upaniṣad, 2.4.1). Śabda is not a pramāṇa in the
sense of describing reality. It is only a pramāṇa in terms of
eliminating all false notions about reality. Sat continues to be
aprameya in spite of śāstra, ācārya, and upadeśa.
How can we contemplate on the inconceivable Reality?
But how am I going to contemplate if the Real is
aprameya, inscrutable? Words cannot reach it, the mind
32
cannot reach it! The answer is found in the fourth line: tasya
smṛtiḥ tatra dṛḍhaiva niṣṭhā. The word smṛti means
contemplation in this context, not recollection. Even though
the Reality cannot be described by words, we still use words.
It is not a contradiction, it is a paradox. You have to
understand the paradox.
Suppose I ask you to contemplate upon a pot. You can do
that because the pot is an object of thought. Now suppose I
ask you, 'Please contemplate upon Vaikuṇṭha (heaven).' You
can do that also. How? You have an idea, an image of
Vaikuṇṭha, albeit a belief, and you can contemplate upon it.
To know sat, you must merge in sat
Sat is not an object like a pot. It is not an image that the
mind could conceive, so contemplation in the conventional
sense is just not possible. It is like the salt doll example of Śrī
Ramakrishna. A doll of salt wanted to know the depth of the
ocean, so it jumps into the ocean. Will it be able to find the
depth and come back and report the depth to you? No. Now
you have an answer, reasonble, doable, logical and rational
answer: the answer is that contemplation of reality is niṣṭhā,
abidance. You merge in Sat and abide in Sat, like the salt doll
in the depths of the ocean.
If you want to know sat, then just be that salt doll and
merge in sat, which is in your heart as the presence 'I am'. „I‟
may feel limited, still it is the presence. The limitedness of 'I'
is the conditionality, whereas essence is the presence. When
you say, 'I am,' that is the presence, though conditioned.

33
Begin with that inner presence and do not try to think about it,
just allow the mind to merge in it.
Niṣṭhā, nitarāṁ sthitiḥ, merger. Dṛḍha, committed,
meaning undistracted. Do not allow yourself to get distracted.
Merge and abide in that inner presence. Merging in it is not to
think about it. You cannot think about it the usual way, like
we think about a pot, heaven, or a form of the God etc. A
bubble in the ocean cannot find the depth and width of the
ocean, but it can certainly merge in the ocean. This is the
greatest meditation and the supreme spiritual practice. Instead
of thinking about the world and getting bound to it, or
meditating upon a form, we allow the thinking faculty to
merge in the inner reality, the Being.
'Hush' mediation
To do this meditation, first you have to be alert. You have
to sit in the upright posture in which there would be 5-7%
better flow of blood to the head. Look at the mind and allow
the mind to resolve in the inner presence. In fact, it can
resolve only in the reality, the inner presence. Do not be in a
hurry. Śanaiḥ śanaiḥ uparamet, slowly let the mind withdraw
(Gita, 6-25). A mahātmā used to say, uparama is uparāma,
withdrawing the mind from the worldly things is same as
going near Rāma. Upa means 'near.' Rāma stands for the
truth.
The mind may initially refuse to cooperate. The mind
wants variety and content, and in the inner silence, there is no
variety and there is no content. It is like looking at a luminous
blank screen but no movie. When I was young, I went to a

34
movie. Initially the screen was blank. People were waiting
with impatience. Then the light was focused on the screen
making it bright. People were excited because the movie
would follow. They were waiting, yet there was only the
bright light. People became impatient and started shouting.
The movie operator was probably toiling with the film roll.
Then suddenly the movie started playing and everyone was
happy. That is how the mind behaves.
The mind craves variety and content
When we try to meditate, pressure is created by the
vāsanās, past impressions, of the mind with an urge to seek
variety and content. A vāsanā is always like the pressure
exerted by the pressure cooker and we get distracted. The
mind wants to think, thinking about something more
attractive and gratifying than no thinking. No thinking,
namely the inner silence, is not void; it is pure presence. But
the mind is not interested in it; it wants content and some
variety. Therefore, you have to get the mind under your
command, buddhyā dhṛti-gṛhītayā (taking the mind firmly in
the control of the intellect …), you have to resolve. Buddhi is
the resolve; you should have dhṛti, the power of holding
things together (Gita, 6-25). Such firmness is needed to hold
the mind back. This is not gloom or grimness, it is a firm
resolve. If the mind does get distracted, you only have to
bring it back into the presence. Do it slowly and steadily;
ātmasaṁsthaṁ manaḥ krtvā, make the mind resolve in
Atman, the inner presence, the awareful presence (Gita, 6-25).
Atman is the awareful presence. Ātma-saṁstham means
abidance in Atman. Interestingly, saṁsthā also has the
35
meaning of death. When the salt doll jumps into the ocean,
what will happen to the salt doll? From one perspective it is
dead, and from another perspective it merges in the ocean.
Here the salt-doll-like mind and the persona, which is the
product of the mind, just dissolves or resolves in Atman.
Then, na kiñcid api cintayet, do not rush into thoughts (Gita,
6-25). In case thoughts may intervene, say 'hush' to yourself.
At once the inner silence prevails. It comes out to the fore.
This is the 'hush mediation.'
The fourth spiritual practice
Then one question arises: 'We have to worship God by
offering flowers, we have to chant the sacred name of God,
and we have to mediate upon the mantra. What is this silence,
just „being?' The answer is that the merging of the mind in the
inner reality is also a spiritual practice. Therefore, we have
now four spiritual practices. The fourth is added to the above
three. In the popular religion, the fourth one is not considered
as a spiritual practice because there is neither form nor name
of Īśvara associated with it. However, the truth is that this
fourth spiritual practice is the supreme amongst all.
Verse 2

मृत्युञ्जयिं मृत्युचिया चितानामहिंमितमृृत्यम

ु प
ु ैित पूिृम् ।
अथ स्विािादमृतेषु तेषु थिं पुनमृृत्युचधयोऽि ाशाः ।। 2
mṛtyuñjayaṁ mṛtyubhiyā śritānā-
mahammatirmṛtyumupaiti pūrvam,
atha svabhāvādamṛteṣu teṣu
kathaṁ punarmṛtyudhiyo‟vakāśaḥ. 2

36
 mṛtyuñjayam – conqueror of death; mṛtyubhiyā - with the
fear of death; śritānām - to those who surrender; pūrvam –
first; ahammatiḥ – the 'me' notion; mṛtyum – death; upaiti –
gets; atha – thereafter; svabhāvāt – by nature; amṛteṣu –
immortal; teṣu – in those; katham – how; punaḥ – again;
mṛtyudhiyaḥ – to the notion of death; avakāśaḥ – room?
For those who, being afraid of death, having sought
shelter in the conqueror of death, the 'me' notion dies
first. Then, where is there any room for the notion of
death in them, who are by nature immortal?
Birth and death are inseparable
This verse offers a wondrous perspective about death. One
difference between jīva and Īśvara is that the jīva is bound by
the cycle of birth and death, whereas Īśvara is free from it.
People like birth, they even pray, 'Oh Bhagavan, janmani
janmani, in every birth, give us wealth,' etc. They do not say,
'in every death.' They are very selective, but there is no room
for selection here. When there is birth, there will be death
also. You cannot separate the two. People like birth but are
afraid of death, even without knowing what death is. In fact,
these two things, birth and death, are equally unknown to us
first hand. No one knows one‟s own birth, so people just go
by hearsay. Somebody tells you that you were born and you
take that as real, and then you ask, 'When was I born?' Why
should you ask 'when'? We ask because the human mind is
caught in time. It is a creature of time and sees everything in
terms of time. For example, heaven is later, not now.

37
The reality of birth and death
When was I born? is not a proper question. Was I born?
What is birth? That inquiry takes the person to reality. One
should have some puṇya, merit, to even ask that question. In
the Yoga-sūtra (2-39), Patañjali Maharṣi says aparigraha-
sthairye janma-kathantā-sambodhaḥ, being well-established
in non-accumulation, one gets the knowledge of the why and
wherefore of one‟s birth. When you are engrossed in
accumulating the things of the world, you lose sight of reality
altogether. You are dragged into some kind of mist-like
consciousness in which you will miss the truth altogether.
That is why wise people advise aparigraha, non-
accumulation.
When one is established in non-accumulation, one is free
from the acquisitive spirit; such a person‟s mind is now open.
It opens up because it is not caught in the mundane things.
Then it starts exploring some of these weighty questions:
Why was I born? Was I born in the first place? These
questions of life and death come up in the mind and the
person will start exploring in that direction. This is a direction
in which people have to explore. As this is a field of
exploration, one may not look for ready made answers. There
are two general problems here: firstly, people want ready
made answers to be handed over by someone; that is
intellectual torpor. Secondly, people want gratifying answers.
This is not the way to explore. You have to explore the entire
field of birth and death together.

38
Who can help when obsessed about the fear of death?
People are so afraid of death that they do not even want to
talk about it. In fact, Sri Vinoba Bhave1 lamented this
situation in India, asking, 'How have people become like this?
This is the land of the Gītā and here people are afraid of even
the mention of death, whereas the Gītā begins with the
exploration of death.' But worldly people and even religious
people do not want to talk about death. It is considered
inauspicious.
People have fear of death. But what can they do about it?
If you are afraid of a rowdy, for example, you can meet a
police officer, who is likely to help you get rid of that
concern. But whom will you see if the fear is of death? You
have to get hold of mṛtyuñjaya, the one who has conquered
death: that is Īśvara. This is the difference between Īśvara and
jīva. If jīva wants to overcome the fear of death, he has to
surrender to Īśvara, the conqueror of death.
There is the well known mṛtyuñjaya mantra. People chant
it and offer oblations in the fire. In doing so, they are able to
overcome the fear of death. It does not mean that they do not
physically die. There is nothing like conquering death in
physical terms. There is ageing, and there will be death. To
expect otherwise is ignorance. What happens is that when you
worship Īśvara properly and surrender to Īśvara, Īśvara will
give you the wisdom by which you conquer death. The idea is
that you understand what death really is. That is the benefit of
worshiping Īśvara. In understanding death, wisdom dawns; so

1
Indian spiritual teacher and founder of the Bhoodan Movement
39
there is a need for understanding death. There are two things
here: firstly, understanding what death is; and secondly,
understanding what self-surrender is. You have to surrender
to the God who has conquered death.
The body is a process
What is the body? It is a process of living. A body is not a
thing. It is a flow, a process, like a chemical reaction. In a
chemical reaction, you mix the reactants in a vessel and heat
it at a given temperature for a specified time. It is a process.
The body is also a process, a process of living. This living
process, like any other process, begins and ends. It is a
process of integration. You collect food from around and feed
the body. The body absorbs and converts the food into
muscle, blood, bones, marrow, etc. All kinds of cells are
created out of that food, so the body grows. It is a continuous
process. Every cell takes the food and manufactures amino
acids and then proteins, which become enzymes and perform
multiple functions. A human cell is like a factory working
24/7. This is a process of integration and suddenly at one
point, like any other process, it ends and disintegration sets in.
What is death? It is the change in the living process, from
integration to disintegration. That is all. You have to remove
all the sentimentality built around the phenomenon of death.
Death is positive entropy
In thermodynamics, there is a phenomenon called entropy,
which is a measure of disorder. Suppose all of you are outside
the hall. There is positive entropy, because in the outside it is
very disorderly. Now all of you come inside and sit in an

40
orderly way. That is negative entropy because you are
becoming orderly. Positive entropy means more disorder,
while negative entropy means more order. Thermodynamics
is science as well as philosophy.
As you look at this world, there is positive entropy
everywhere. This is the law of thermodynamics: entropy is
always on the increase. A living organism represents negative
entropy. As I sit here, there is positive entropy all around this
body, whereas in this body there is negative entropy. That is
the difference: where there is a plant or a small creature, there
is negative entropy within that, while all around it is positive
entropy.
Thus, life is a continuous consumption of negative
entropy. Then at some point, that process of consuming
negative entropy suddenly ends. From then on, it is positive
entropy and the body disintegrates. Sages did not use the
word entropy, but the vision is very much apparent in their
words. They said pañcatvam āgataḥ, he has turned into five.
Earlier he was one, now he became five, meaning that the
physical matter of the body merges into pṛthivī, earth, water
merges into āpaḥ, the universal water, and thermal content of
the body (enthalpy) merges into agni, the universal heat. The
air of the body merges in the universal air, vāyu. And ākāśa,
space, is always one and undivided.
So all the five elements, which were in negative entropy
because they were more structured, more organized, now go
into the positive entropy from which they came. This negative
entropy originated from the positive entropy all around, and
having come from positive entropy, it goes back into positive
41
entropy. That is called death. Death is a name given to a very
natural process, there is nothing abnormal or unnatural about
it. Therefore, there is a great need to desentimentalize death.
That is one aspect of wisdom.
In death, only the body dies
There are two more things about death that one should
know. Firstly, in death only the body dies. Let us accept the
notion what people call death. But what is it that dies? Only
the body dies; life itself does not die. It is like the fusing of a
light bulb. There is electricity network put in place by the
power utility company, and in that network there are millions
of bulbs. You may say 'my bulb,' but there is no my bulb, and
there is also no single bulb; there is only a network. It is like
saying there are many bubbles. You think there are many
bubbles, but in fact there is only one water body. Similarly
you may say that 'there is this bulb and that bulb.' You say
that because you are accustomed to look at the particular. But
if you learn to look at the general, which is the truth, you will
see that the particular is always a superimposition by the
mind. It is nāma-rūpa, name and form. Nāma-rūpa is unreal,
so when you look at the whole you have only a network. In
this network, every minute a few bulbs are fusing and
replaced with a new set of bulbs, but the network remains the
same. Similarly, there is one living being, one living
organism. Its life process ends and disintegration sets in, but
at the same time another organism has started the process of
living. The network, which is the cosmic life, remains just the
same, however. It does not die.

42
 Reality doesn‟t die. The body dies, consciousness doesn‟t
die. The conscious person will continue to be conscious of
what is happening to the body. There is pain in the body and
he knows it, the pain ends and he knows it. The body is active
and he knows it, and now the body is inert and he knows it.
Therefore, he knows that he is distinct from everything else
all the time. Atman, which is consciousness, the reality, does
not die.
Life continues after death
One more thing: life is never as alive as it is after death.
This may sound a bit odd! Life is very alive after death
because previously life was tethered to the body. The body is
always dead, it never lived. One day, Ramana Maharshi saw
four people carrying a dead body, and said: 'Four dead bodies
are carrying another dead body.' The body is śava, a corpse,
whereas caitanya, awareness, is Śiva. Śiva remains Śiva, śava
is ever śava. In identifying with the body, we are identifying
ourselves with a cadaver.
Therefore life is very much alive, more alive than ever,
when it is disassociated from the body. It is like electricity,
which shines when flowing through a filament. But when the
filament is broken, electricity is most strikingly powerful in
the air gap. Where there is no filament, there may be a spark,
and that spark is the most powerful expression of electricity.
Similarly with life.
Mahātmās love death because that is the end of the
nuisance of preserving one‟s body. One has to feed it, clean it,
and so on. So the nuisance is over, but consciousness ever

43
remains the same. That is why mahātmās celebrate death.
And when somebody is born, they mourn because this poor
guy has now come into this world somehow and the suffering
begins. When will his suffering end? For seventy, eighty,
maybe ninety years he has to struggle, like a bull carrying a
load. Poor guy, to be born! Whereas death, what a freedom! If
you want deathlessness, understand that only the unborn is
deathless. So we need to find out what is that unborn. That
will not have death and it is one‟s svarūpa, essential nature.
Life and death are always together
Secondly, life and death always go together. Generally we
keep life and death separate. Death is sometime in the future,
whereas life is now. Life and death are two aspects of the
same reality, the sat. For example: inhaling and exhaling are
opposites, but there is no opposition because both belong to
the same air. Inhalation is life and exhalation is death. We can
meditate by watching the breath. When you inhale, you feel
the life and when you exhale, it appears death-like. Therefore
inhalation is life and exhalation is death for the body. Life and
death are together in every breath. You do not die; you are the
witness of death. You have to learn to see the end in the
beginning and the beginning in the end. That is philosophy.
You are not the life and you are not the death – you are the
one who watches them moment by moment.
You can also explore another aspect of this: when you
inhale, the egoism, the sense of being a person, is intense.
Whereas when you exhale, you witness the death of that ego.
You have to watch it carefully. The sages watched it and
understood the secret of life and death. There are secrets
44
hidden in that inhalation and exhalation. The ṛṣi sang,
namaste vāyo, tvameva pratyakṣaṁ brahmāsi – salutations
unto you, O Vāyu! You are indeed that Brahman directly
perceptible! When you inhale and exhale, you are in intimate
contact with Life.
Separating the beginning from the end of a process is due
to ignorance. When something begins, its end is inherent in
the process. When they built the Verrazano Narrows Bridge,1
it was declared that it will continue to serve the community
for one hundred years. It was declared right at the beginning,
so the end is implicit in the very beginning. And when a child
is born, in that birth death is implicit and vice versa, just like
in inhalation there is exhalation, and in exhalation there is
inhalation. When one is able to see the end in the beginning
and the beginning in the end, that is the intimation of the
eternal. What begins ends and what ends begins, whereas I
am the eternal, ever watching this movement of the beginning
and end. We have to learn to see the opposites in the one and
same reality. It is like the North Pole and the South Pole: they
are never separated.
The reality never dies
When a person dies, we say 'he or she is no more.' But in
what sense? In the same sense in which a river is no more
when it merges in the ocean, because the name and form are
no more. In the case of the river, it is not the Ganges or the
Delaware anymore, and the form of the river is also gone

1
A suspension bridge in the USA, spanning New York Harbor from
Brooklyn to Staten Island.
45
because it merges in the ocean, and becomes one with the
ocean. But the water remains, water does not disappear.
Similarly, when the individual mind joins the universal mind,
that is the merger, the real mokṣa, liberation from the cycle of
birth and death. You can say that mokṣa is the death of the
personality.
Personality means the personal mind, a mind which is
considered limited with a name and form, due to ignorance.
Now, when ignorance is gone due to right understanding, that
mind merges in the universal mind just as the river merges in
the ocean. This is the way we have to understand the real
nature of life and death. When we understand that, then even
while living, the personality or the egoism dies.
This understanding comes when we surrender to Īśvara,
the conqueror of death. The difference between the jīva and
Īśvara is because of ignorance. If you see the very beginning
of the bhāṣya in the Gītā, Śrī Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna, 'I am the
jñānī, knower of the truth, and you are the jijñāsu, the one
who wants to know. I am Īśvara and you are the jīva only
because I know what I know and you do not know what I
know.' Then Sri Śaṅkara adds, 'If you come to know what I
know, then there is no difference between you and me. You
become one with me and I become one with you.'
Praying for worldly rewards is asking for death
If somebody worships Īśvara to gain heaven, he is seeking
nothing but death. Therefore he will go to heaven, he will die
in heaven and will come back. Mṛtyossa mṛtyumāpnoti ya iha
nāneva paśyati, the one who sees duality in this world goes

46
from death to death (Kathopanishad, 2-1-10); he is seeking
death after death when in his ignorance he sees the unreal
world as real. He prays, 'Oh Īśvara, give me wealth and
pleasures birth after birth.' He sees birth after birth, but he
will also get death after death.
There is a story about this in Śrīmad Bhāgavatam. Śrīmad
Bhāgavatam is highly symbolic; one should not get stuck with
the literal meaning, and perform ceremonies and rituals based
on that literality. There was an ogre named Hiraṇyakaśipu,
who performed austerities of the most severe kind. Whenever
someone is very extreme in his austerities, there is something
wrong. One never knows the truth while struggling.
Hiraṇyakaśipu was performing some severe austerities.
Then Brahma Deva appeared before him and said, 'Your
austerities have earned you a boon. What do you want?'
Hiraṇyakaśipu answered, 'I want deathlessness.'
Deathlessness for whom?'
'For me.'
That is not possible.'
'But I have performed great austerities.'
'You have performed great austerities, true, and I have to
give you a boon. Even I am not deathless. At the end of this
cycle of creation, I am going to die, and a new Brahmā Deva
will be born. Therefore how can I give you the boon of
deathlessness?'
Then Hiraṇyakaśipu relented, 'Okay, I will modify my
demand: I should not die either during the day or the night.'
47
And Brahma Deva thought, 'You will die during the time of
sandhya, twilight' and said, 'Yes.' Now, is it a boon of
deathlessness or of death? Hiraṇyakaśipu further said, 'I
should not die by the agency of a human being or a god or an
animal.' Brahma Deva thought, 'you will die by the agency of
someone, who is not part of my creation,‟ and he said, 'Yes.'
Then Hiraṇyakaśipu said, „I should die neither on land nor
in water.' Brahma Deva thought, 'you will die on something
which is neither land nor water' and said, 'Yes.'1 Thus every
boon he was seeking is the assertion of death alone. That is
not the way to worship Īśvara. Instead, we have to take refuge
in Him.
How to take refuge?
The way to take refuge is by knowledge, and the
acceptance that comes out of knowledge. The knowledge that
is wisdom, not some scholastic excellence. For example, look
at the body: it is put together by the food consumed; it is
annamaya, the food body. Every time you recollect this fact
and call it 'food body,' your wisdom grows, and every time
you call it 'me,' your wisdom takes the back-seat. Always call
it 'food body,' idaṁ śarīram, 'this body.' What is really
important is the understanding implied in what you say. All
the groceries of the supermarket become this body. The cereal
packet in the shelf becomes the blood and the muscle of the
body within a day or two.

1
Author's paraphrase.
48
The need for acceptance
You need to accept the body-mind as it is so that you can
go beyond it. It is like somebody has done something to me
and I accepted it, so now I am done with him. But if I resist it,
thinking 'How can he do that to me?,' then he is there with
me. Similarly, if you cannot accept death of the body and
insist that it has to live, you are stuck with birth and death. On
the other hand, you accept that the body has to die. Then you
will never die, but body dies.
Any sentimentality around death is worthless. The
sentimentality and ritualism that is associated with the death
in all cultures do not fit into Vedanta. The important thing is
to understand and accept that the body-mind belongs to
nature. This is the law: the entire physiology and psychology
belong to nature. You can never say 'my' with reference to
physiology and psychology because they are part of nature.
The mind is an integral part of the universal mind; the body is
an integral part of the universal body. Surrender the body-
mind to Īśvara because the body-mind belongs to Nature and
therefore to Īśvara. That is the true surrender. As you
surrender the body-mind to Īśvara, remain as a witness,
accepting all the dynamics in the body. Of course, we respond
to the emerging situations, e.g. taking medicine when there is
some pain.
Conquering body identification is conquering death
When you do this, the first thing that happens is ahammatir
mṛtyumupaiti, the ego identification ceases to exist. That is
what we should seek. This egoistic identity with the body

49
should die first, and it will. As the egoistic identity with the
body dies, death is conquered. Once a gentleman came to
Ramana Maharshi seeking blessings on his birthday. He was
born that day thirty years ago. How can he be born that day
thirty years ago? The contradiction is very obvious. Maharshi
replied, when you woke up today in the morning, when the
ego sprung up, that was the time when you were born.'1 The
birth is for the ego only.
Birth is birth of the ego, death is death of the ego
When you wake up, the window of the mind is open to the
light of awareness. It is like opening a window to the sun; the
room is flooded with light. The light of the sun of Atman
floods in and the entire content of the mind shines. The body
and the world are the content of the mind and they light up
together. There is then instant identification of the awareness
with the body giving rise to the ego. That is the birth. Death is
also that of ego alone. This is nitya sṛṣṭi nitya pralaya,
everyday creation and everyday annihilation.
When you take refuge in Īśvara, the very first thing that
happens is the death of the egoism. Once the egoism dies, you
are the immortal Self. The birth of this egoism is birth; the
death of this egoism is death. The body-identified egoism
dissolves for a mahātmā, leading to egoless awareness. There
is no choice, no desire, and no fear. Choice, desire, and fear
are constructs of the ego.
What is left now? When these constructs of ego are gone,
what remains is the immortal Self. There is no scope at all for

1
Author's paraphrase.
50
the idea of death; the idea of death evaporates. That is why
mahātmās are not afraid of death. The idea of death, i.e. 'I am
going to die,' does not even cross their mind. What has to die
is already dead and there is no more death.
What remains after the death of the ego is the immortal
self. And when I realize the immortal self, I will not be
saying, 'I will not die,' or 'I am immortal' because the idea of
death does not cross the mind. The body carries on: it will
have its comforts and discomforts, and the mind responds
accordingly. The body becomes sick, the mind provides
medicine. The body becomes hungry, the mind provides food.
The body becomes thirsty, the mind provides water. Atman is
the uninvolved witness. There is no egoism and therefore
there is complete spontaneity. Thus even the idea of death
does not have a place in the consciousness of the mahātmā.
Verse 3

सिैिनृदानिं जगतोऽहमश्च िाच्याः प्रिुाः चश्चदपारशिताः ।

चित्रेऽत्र लोक्यिं ि ििलोि ता ि पटाः प्र ाशोऽप्यिित्स ए ाः ।।3
sarvairnidānaṁ jagato‟hamaśca
vācyaḥ prabhuḥ kaścidapāraśaktiḥ,
citre‟tra lokyaṁ ca vilokitā ca
paṭaḥ prakāśo‟pyabhavatsa ekaḥ. 3
sarvaiḥ – by all; jagataḥ – of the universe ; ca – and;
ahamaḥ – of 'I'; nidānam – cause; prabhuḥ – Lord; kaścid –
some; apāraśaktiḥ – one having boundless power; vācyaḥ –
has to be declared (accepted); atra – in this; citre– picture; saḥ
– That; ekaḥ – One; lokyam – the seen; ca– and; vilokitā – the

51
seer; ca – and; paṭaḥ – cloth (canvas or screen); prakāśaḥ –
light; api – also; abhavat – has become.
The cause of the world and the 'I' has to be accepted
by everyone as some Lord (Omnipotent) with infinite
power. In this picture (called the universe), That One
alone has become the seen, the seer, the canvas
(screen), and the light also.
Three types of vision
Everybody lives by a particular dṛṣṭi, vision; life is guided
by that vision. For example, the life of a businessman is
dictated by a set of ideas of life that he holds on to. The
worldly person has a different vision, the religious person also
has a vision, and the philosopher has another vision. For the
worldly person, the world is the most important thing; God
can wait. He is a small part of his world. Therefore he has to
manipulate the world to suit his convenience. The world gives
him pleasure and pain, so he has to change things in the world
in a way that they favor him and he gets more pleasure and
less pain. This is how worldly people live. Who are the
worldly persons? There is a worldly person in every one of
us.
For the religious person, the world is there all right, but the
main thing is the afterlife, heaven or paradise. In fact, for a
vaidika, one devoted to religious rituals, everything until
death is only a preparation for the real life that will come after
death. He prepares himself for the afterlife. He has performed
all the appropriate rituals and finished with them, so he is set
out to go to heaven. He does not seek pleasures in this world;

52
he postpones all pleasures for the future in heaven. If he has
to go through some pain here in this world for the sake of the
future pleasure, he is quite willing. Some forms of tapas,
austerities, etc. are performed with a lot of difficulty to ensure
the pleasure of the afterlife. These are the 'paradise people,'
and for them, the 'I' is a kartā, doer, now in this world, so that
I will be a bhoktā, enjoyer, in the other world. The worldly
person is also a kartā-bhoktā: he is the kartā here and also the
bhoktā here in this world. In the opinion of the worldly person
as well as the religious person, the world or the heaven is
supreme. The 'I,' on the other hand, is always a silly,
insignificant, helpless being who has to struggle hard as a
kartā for pleasures here or hereafter. This is the belief of the
worldly person and the religious person as well!
The philosopher’s vision
In philosophy, however, the vision is exactly the opposite,
just like the 'common sense vision' vis-a-vis the vision of the
śāstra. The standard example is that the sun rises in the east
and sets in the west at given times. These times are recorded,
and therefore every time we look at the calendar for the times
of the sunrise and the sunset. According to the religious texts,
in addition there is a mountain, called udaya giri, from which
the sun rises, and another mountain behind which the sun sets.
The sun has to travel a long distance between these two
mountains, and therefore it has a chariot. There is also a
charioteer, who is called Aruṇa, and so on. This is the
imagery in the Hindu tradition. Temples and rituals are based
on this imagery. This is the „local‟ dṛṣṭi, coupled with some
religious dṛṣṭi.
53
 This is the dṛṣṭi I had, when I started my life. Then at some
point, perhaps when I was studying in high school, the whole
thing suddenly turned topsy-turvy, because of the study of
science. Now the sun remains stationary. It is not the sun
which goes round the earth; it is the earth which goes round
the sun. There is no rising or setting of the sun; day and night
are there only for the earth, not for the sun. So one‟s entire
imagery is turned upside down: there is no chariot, no horses
– it is all only symbolic. This is the true vision of the śāstra.
This world and heaven (representing God, etc.) are not
primary; they come only after 'I am' is in place. First I come,
and once I am in place, only then is the world manifest.
People believe that they come into this world and go out of
this world. They talk endlessly about earlier birth and next
birth, prārabdha karma, the destiny, etc. Here, however, we
are exploring sad darśanam, the vision of the truth; now we
see things differently. As long as you believe that you come
into this world and go out of this world, you will never know
the truth. You will come to realize the truth only when you
understand that a world comes into your awareness when you
wake up, and when you sleep the world resolves into your
awareness. If you are ready for turning the whole blessed
thing on its head, then you are a student of Vedanta.
Karma doctrine is only a model
Transmigration of soul is a model, albeit a very nice and
logical model, which is useful in explaining the opposites
experienced in temporal life. It is good in its place, but we
have to move forward and go beyond it. It is not the model
put forward by Śrī Kṛṣṇa in the Gita to begin with. At the
54
beginning of the second chapter, Śrī Kṛṣṇa presents Self-
knowledge, called sāṅkhya, from verse 11 to verse 30. When
it seems that Arjuna does not understand, Śrī Kṛṣṇa comes
down and says (2-26), atha cainaṁ nityajātaṁ nityaṁ vā
manyase mṛtam, 'if you do not understand what I said, namely
that you do not have birth or death, if you think that you are
always born into this world and will always die, even then
there is no need to grieve.'
To recapitulate: as long as you think you come into this
world and go out of this world, you will not come to know the
truth. You have to relax, explore, visualize, and see. For
example, I have a friend. Now I ask myself, where has this
friend come from? When I wake up, the waking
consciousness starts moving, and suddenly in that
consciousness the friend arises. Therefore I am creating the
friend; he is coming out of myself. The same applies to my
foe. Why should you create a friend and a foe? Today you
call him friend, tomorrow you may call him a foe; today you
say it is beautiful, tomorrow you say it is ugly. You can stop
imagining all that and become sama, equanimous or impartial.
People believe that God created friends and foes, and so we
have to deal with them.
The world has a primordial cause
As I become awake from sleep, the fundamental thought 'I
am' arises first in my awareness, and then thought of the
world. As I identify with the body and take myself to be
small, the world appears overwhelmingly big. I have not
created it myself; a higher power has created me. I see, for
example, that I am not the author of seeing or of any other
55
faculty. They are all given to me, I did not create them. This
entire world is created, obviously not by me. This much
should be accepted by all people. Here Maharshi means that
whether they are Vaiṣṇavas or Śaivas or Buddhists or
Christians or belonging to other religions, all of them should
accept this much, namely that there is a cause, a primordial
cause, of this world and also of oneself.
This whole universe has originated from nidāna, a primary
or essential cause. Even scientists, who are silent about God,
do accept nidāna, a cause. All religious-minded people of
course accept a cause, though they fight about the name of
that cause. The cause of the universe is also the cause of
myself.
The cause is one and it is the commanding power
The cause of the universe is the higher power, which
translates as Īśvara. Īśa means power, that which commands;
vara is a suffix meaning 'higher.' There is nothing higher than
that, and that power is one, it cannot be two. It makes the
tongue speak and the ears hear. In fact, when somebody is
speaking and somebody else is listening, the same power is
working on both the sides. 'I am hearing the song that I am
singing.' It is not only the cause, but also the antaryāmī, inner
commanding power. It pervades all these bodies; It pervades
all that it has created. It is like the same power of electricity
that pervades and commands a city of billion lights. You may
call that power 'God.' It is also called Atman. Whatever name
we give, it is essentially the nameless Omnipotence
permeating all the bodies like a thread passing through the
beads of a rosary, as Śrī Kṛṣṇa says in the Gita (7-7).
56
Even atheists and agnostics can accept this vision
Everybody including the atheists and agnostics would
accept such prabhu, the commanding power. For example, the
German philosopher Nietzsche said, 'God is dead' only in the
context of such idealism. He is talking of the idea of a
gentleman called God dwelling somewhere in the heaven.
Some of the athiests that the author knows oppose the
conceptual God only; they are not against this vision of the
philosophy.
Seeing God as Śakti, the Universal Power
We can say that this entire universe is simply a
manifestation of energy. Even matter is only condensed
energy, so much so we can calculate the wave length for an
object using Schrodinger‟s equations. The wavelength is
related to energy like mass is to matter. Space is gravitational
energy, wind kinetic energy, fire radiational energy, water
electrical energy, and earth magnetic energy. Thus everything
is a manifestation of the cosmic energy.
Cosmic energy is the symbol of God. Matter has its origin
in energy and energy has its origin in God. Thus people in
India deify energy and worship God as Śakti, the feminine
aspect, representing the cosmic power of the sentient God
called Śiva. Therefore even the atheists and agnostics have to
readily accept that there is a higher supra-personal power that
creates and commands this universe. Brahman, the origin of
the universe, has infinite power. You cannot estimate this
power. You can estimate the power of the sun or of a star.

57
Manifestation is in the form of opposites
We have to understand that the manifest universe is in the
form of opposites. For example, water appears as the waves
with crests and troughs. In magnetism, there are the opposites
of North and South Pole. In electricity, it is positive and
negative charge. You name it, and it will be in the form of
opposites. Even in a bank account, it is credit and debit. In the
case of matter, it is solid and fluid. Here fluid can be taken to
include gases and liquids.
There are always opposites, and the secret of these
opposites is that they are just opposite, but there is no
opposition between them. It is like the North Pole and South
Pole – they are opposites of the same magnetism, but they are
not opposed. They are both aspects of the same magnetism.
Magnetic field alone appears as north and south poles. East
and west are opposites, but are of the same space. North and
south, up and down, all are of the same space. Sentient and
insentient are opposites, but they are the same reality. The
word for a pair of opposites in Sanskrit is dvandva, a word we
come across often in the Gītā. Śrī Kṛṣṇa says that we have to
endure the dvandvas, and then become nirdvandva, go beyond
them, because they are not the reality.
Opposites belong to the same reality
'Is' and 'is not' is a pair of opposites because both are in the
same consciousness. Matter and energy are also two
expressions of the same reality. Condensed energy is matter,
and blown up or expanded matter is energy. Also, Einstein
established that space and time are opposites, and both are

58
subjective. The separation between two events, not two
points, equals the square root of x2 + y2 + z2 – t2. In this
equation, x, y and z represent the three dimensional space and
t time. The minus before the time t signifies that space and
time are opposites.
As we interact with this world, there is contact between the
sense organs and the sense objects leading to the experience
of the opposites, pleasure and pain, cold and heat etc (Gita, 2-
14). Cold can be pleasant or painful, and the same applies to
heat. This is how the opposites are: you cannot even say that
under all conditions, heat is pleasant and cold is painful, or
that cold is pleasant and heat is painful. They can be both.
And the universe is all pairs of opposites. One who is caught
in these opposites is called a saṃsārī, worldly person, and one
who rises above the opposites is a jñānī, the realized one.
Mind and matter are opposites
The important proposition of the Vedanta is that mind and
matter are opposites. Mind is the subject and matter is the
object. Matter is the material world that we perceive and mind
the perceiver. This is the subject-object duality, not unlike
debit and credit – both are dollars. The mind is the seer and
matter is the seen. The Maharshi says that atra, here in this
universe, which is a citra, a movie or scene, there is the lokya,
seen, and there is the vilokitā, the seer. It is a scene on a paṭa,
canvas or screen.
The world is like a reflection
This brings in the idea of a movie. The movie is an
illustration that captures the vision of these mahātmās like Sri
59
Śaṅkara. He talks of a movie in his own style, viśvaṃ
darpaṇa-dṛṣyamāna-nagarī tulyam, the world is like a city
seen in a mirror (Dakshinamurthi stotram, 1). There is a story
by Sri Swami Ramatirtha that illustrates this nicely:
Once a king ordered a contest between two artists. There
was a corridor, and each artist was given one wall of the
corridor to paint on. One artist painted on one wall and the
other painted on the wall that is directly opposite. They were
given one month‟s time to paint a mural on their respective
walls. Each was given the wall of the same size, the same
materials, and so forth. Everything was equal so that the
people could judge who the best painter was. Because the
walls were facing each other pretty close, they put a curtain so
that nobody could see what each man is doing. After one
month, the curtain over the first wall was opened, and there in
the mural was a beautiful city, apparently three-dimensional:
there were streets, buildings, traffic, people, coaches being
drawn by horses, lights, everything. It was a most spectacular
city and everyone was amazed. Then they asked the other
artist, 'Okay, are you ready?' He said, 'Yes,' and they removed
the curtain. They all saw an equally beautiful city, only a little
more beautiful than the first one, and so the second artist won
the contest.
But do you know what he did? He polished the wall, that is
all. For one month, he used all his energy and polished the
wall to the finish of a mirror, which reflected the other mural
marvelously and you could not make out that it was a
reflection after all. So the polisher got first prize for making
the city appear better in the mirror.
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Five factors account for the entire universe
Here we have a canvas and a beautiful scene painted on
that canvas. In that scene, we see somebody is standing and
enjoying a beautiful meadow, a mountain, and a sunrise. The
one who is enjoying the scenery is also a part of that scene
that he is enjoying. Now, we have four things: paṭa, the
canvas, citra, the scene, draṣṭā, the seer or knower, and dṛśya,
the seen or the known.
However, we have overlooked one crucial thing. That is
the light. If prākāśa, the light, were not there, the other four
were as good as non-existent. These five items – light,
canvas, scenery, knower, and known – account for the entire
universe. In this, the knower and the known constitute a pair
of opposites. The known in the scenery and the canvas, and
all of them are illuminated by the light. This is the universe
that is seen by us.
The canvas is the space-time. This is science. World is
what we see on the canvas of space-time. That is what
Einstein said, and that is what Sri Śaṅkara also said in
Dakṣiṇāmūrti-stotram (2), māyā-kalpita-deśa-kāla-kalanā-
vaicitryacitrī-kṛtam, the universe of wondrous plurality
created by space-time, projected by illusion. Whatever we
know, we know it on the canvas of space and time. When you
say 'this is a pot,' it means that the pot is 'here,' which is
space, and it is 'now,' which is time. And it is here in this
form, which is also space.
Without space-time, there cannot be cognition of an object.
The difference between the eyes and the mind is that the eyes

61
capture light and produce optical sensations. For example,
when you see a flower, the mind converts the data, which is in
the form of optical sensations, into cognition. The mind
receives the optical sensations as data, and adds space and
time and other qualities to that data.
Cognition is a synthesis by the mind
The mind has the space-time framework fixed within it. It
synthesizes the cognition out of the sensations that are fed by
the sense organs. Mind adds space-time and causality to the
sense data. For example, that a flower has its cause in a plant
is not perceived by the eye sight. It is the deduction by the
mind. Similarly, all relationships are in the mind. For
example, the thought 'this is not mine, this belongs to
somebody else' is a relationship between the object and the
person. That relationship is not indicated by the object; it is in
the mind. All relationships, all causality, all space and time
are in the mind.
The point is that the mind is the knower, space-time is the
canvas. The world is what is seen or known to you, you are
the knower, and the light in which it is seen is your caitanya,
awareness. That completes the picture. Now the conclusion is
that the light, which is the one-without-a-second, or the
higher power, is also the canvas, the scenery, the knower, and
the known as well.
Pairs of opposites arise and vanish together
The opposites arise and vanish together. Take the example
of an electromagnet. There is no magnetism when the switch
is off. The moment you put the switch on, there is magnetism,
62
and at once the north and south poles emerge. When you
switch off the magnetism, the two poles together, vanish. The
same pair of opposites has always the same origin. Similarly,
the mind within, and the matter without, have the same origin;
the same light of consciousness appears as the knower and the
known.
The triad of myself, the world, and God
What we are looking at is a triad. I experience myself, and
of course the world is constantly experienced. If I take myself
as the body-mind, then both the world and myself are in
perpetual change. This continuous change in the world and in
myself presupposes a nidāna, cause. And this cause must be
of illimitable power. It cannot be limited because if the cause
were limited, it cannot be the cause of this entire universe, in
which everything is limited.
Therefore the cause must be limitless or illimitable power,
from which this entire universe and myself and other life
forms have originated. Having originated, all life-forms abide
in that power and the entire universe has its existence in that
power alone. That cause, apāra-śakti, infinite power,
illimitable power, is called God, the omnipotent.
Now we arrive at a three-fold truth: myself, the world, and
the cause. But once we arrive at this triad, it appears that it is
against the basic tenet of truth being one without a second.
How do we reconcile that? In fact, it is not a triad – it only
appears that way. It is one Reality without the second. Thus
the oneness of all existence is not in jeopardy.

63
 The jagat, which is the totality of all the objects of the
world, is called „matter.‟ The totality of all minds of living
forms is called the 'universal mind.' Therefore there is mind,
matter, and the cause thereof. Mind is myself, matter is the
jagat, and the cause is the illimitable power called God. But it
is not a three-fold truth because the cause is the only reality,
and this alone manifests as the matter and the mind. That
Brahman alone reflects as the being in matter and as knowing
in the mind.
The world is the perceived
When you say 'a pot,' it is the pot that is known. Or need
not be the known? Of course, it must be the known, since
there cannot be an altogether unknown thing. Flower, river,
mountain – anything you say is something known to you,
known to a conscious being. Jagat is what is known to you.
Esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived, declared the
philosopher Bishop Berkeley. Every thing exists only in as
much as it is known to a conscious being. That known is what
we call lokya. The pot is lokya, perceived, so also the
mountain, the river, etc. Everything is lokya. Therefore the
entire universe can be categorized as perceived
(perceptibility) and the conscious being is the perceiver.
Regardless of any particular name and form, a pot or a flower,
it is lokya. The perceived alone appears as the jagat.
Perceptibility and perceiving have the same source
The perceiver (perceiving) is the universal mind, vilokitā.
Perceiving and perceptibility both have the same origin, the
ananta-śakti, illimitable power. If the same reality appears as

64
perceptibility and perceiving, what is the nature of that
reality? It must be jñāna, 'knowing-ness,' because the knower
and the known are the attributes of knowing. That is the
prākaśa, light. It is the same light of knowing-ness, which
appears in one condition as lokya, perceived, and in another
condition lokitā, perceiver. It means that this jñāna, which is
illimitable prākaśa, is asserting itself externally as
perceptibility and internally as perceiving.
You are the power of perceiving
When you look at yourself internally, what are you? You
are the Well Head of perceiving. This world, on the other
hand, is nothing but so many names and forms, all held
together in one general principle of perceptibility. When you
call something a pot, it is perceptibility with a name and the
form of pot. When you say cloth, again it is perceptibility
with the name and form of cloth. Names and forms change,
but the perceptibility does not change. I am that power behind
perceiving, which perceives the entire waking state and its
content, the dream state and its content, and nothingness as an
experience of the deep sleep state.
Identification with the body-mind obstructs the vision of
oneness
In this picture of the triad, the One becomes all the three.
The subject-object duality resolves in the oneness of the truth.
But as long as there is identity with the body-mind and thus
an egoistic entity, the one origin of the subject-object duality
cannot be appreciated. Isolating oneself from the whole,
standing apart from the whole as the subject and making the

65
whole as the object, is a big mistake. This subject-object
duality becomes an insurmountable obstruction for realizing
the oneness of the truth. Instead of taking yourself to be an
egoistic persona, look at yourself as the power of perceiving.
This is the oneness that is the origin of this dipole called
subject and object.
When you say 'I see,' it means I am the seer, the one who
sees. Say, the flower is the seen. The seer-seen division is
very much fixed now and appears as something very real.
There is as though a wall, with the subject on one side and the
object on the other side. The subject can never be the same as
the object, and vice-versa.
Seeing is the truth of the seer and the seen
However, seeing must be there, only then can there be the
seen and the seer. And seeing comes first. Externally that
seeing presents itself as the seen, and internally it is the seer.
The seer-seen division is not a fact; seeing is the fact. Seeing,
which we call dṛk, is the truth. That dṛk alone appears
externally as the seen and internally as the seer. There is no
division in seeing, neither external nor internal. The truth is
not dual now, it is one, non-dual.
Seeing is the changeless cause of the seer-seen duality
The cause of this seer-seen duality is the fact of seeing.
Now there is a doubt: if it is the cause of this duality, it must
have undergone some change. While giving rise to the effect,
the cause must undergo change. Without change, how can the
cause give rise to the effect? But here there is no such
transformation. It remains the undivided, indivisible fact of
66
seeing, and yet it perpetually gives rise to the duality of seer
and seen. Seeing by itself is the timeless. There is no time in
seeing because it is changeless, and therefore it is the cause
without undergoing any modification in itself.
This is a very unusual cause-effect relationship. It is not
like milk being the cause of curds. Milk is transformed into
curds, which is a transformative causation. Raw rice
becoming cooked rice is another transformative causation. If
the seeing is not split into, not modified, as seer and seen,
then it is a very unusual causation, not anything ordinary or
logical or rational. It is a magical causation. A magician
causes some effect, but there is no rationality in that
causation. If it is rational, you do not call it magic. So it is a
causation, but not a rational causation. That is why it is called
māyā, magic.
Māyā is the fact of life
Swami Vivekananda gave a nice description (Jñāna Yoga,
third chapter) of māyā. He says that māyā is not a speculation;
it is not some armchair philosophy. It is the fact of life.
Without māyā, how can you have the undivided indivisible
seeing as the cause of this perpetual duality of seer-seen? For
example, light does not undergo any modification when
projecting a movie. When you watch a movie, the light
appears as the hero, heroine, and villain. What happened to
the light in becoming the cause of this hero, heroine, and
villain? What kind of modification has it undergone? None –
light remains as light without undergoing any change.

67
 When you see anything, you see only light. You don‟t see
anything else because the eyes see only light. 'No, no, I see a
pot.' That is not true, you do not see a pot, you see the light.
Suppose there is no light: the room is dark and a pot is there.
Will you see that pot? No. Why? You have eyes which can
see and the pot is there. Because there is no light. Then I put
on the light, and you say, 'Now I see the pot.' But do you
really see the pot, or do you see light? In fact, what you see is
only light, but you see that light as 'pot.' Has light transformed
into a pot? No. Light remains as light. You continue to see the
same light, yet you see the pot.
The mind establishes the world, and vice versa
It is a trick of the eyesight and the mind that makes you see
what you see. You see the world through the instrumentality
of sense organs and the mind alone. Without this
instrumentality, you never see anything called the world.
Therefore what you call the world is relative to the sense
organs and the mind. The world is not absolute.
The functioning of the sense organs and the mind is not
absolute. Eyesight is established by the seen. Suppose I am
looking and there is nothing to be seen, then do I have the
eyesight? No. The seen establishes the eyesight, and the seer
establishes the seen – they are mutually dependent. Likewise,
you do not have anything called the world without the mind.
Even in the waking state, if the mind is completely still there
is no world anymore. Therefore the world that you are
experiencing in the waking state is entirely dependent upon
your mind. When you are conscious, the mind is there, and
the world is there. When the mind is not conscious, there is no
68
world. Without perception or conception of the world, there is
no mind. The mind and the world go together.
On the other hand, prākaśa, the light, the light of
awareness, is absolute. Without itself undergoing any
modification which is where māyā comes in, that light asserts
itself as the world and as the mind. Remaining timelessly
what it is, without undergoing any change, it is the cause of
this duality of the mind and matter.
Causation is only apparitional, not transformational
There is no transformation in conclusion, only apparition.
The light in the movie is the example: The light of the
projector projects the hero, heroine, villain, and many other
scenes. This causation is clearly apparitional, not
transformational.
What is it that causes this apparition? Māyā, the power of
magic. The magic here is that the cause does not undergo any
transformation to become the cause of the duality. The cause
is timeless, and without undergoing any changes in that status
of timelessness, it is the cause of the timebound duality of
matter and mind. It is the beginningless, but in it begins this
duality of matter and mind. It is the changeless, but in it
appear the changeful duality of matter and mind. It is endless,
but in it everything ends. It is timeless, but in it time comes
and plays a game. This is the magic.
Maharshi uses the word citra, picture, because he had
apparitional causation in mind. Citra means the picture, or the
movie. Jagat is a movie. Ś́ ́́ ri Ś́ ́́ aṅkara described jagat as a city
in the mirror.
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When there is only one, why do we fail to see the oneness?
When the same illimitable immutable power of light,
which is knowledge, is asserting as the world, why does the
mind fail to see the oneness? The mind sees many names and
forms, all different. It is the nature of the mind to divide and
particularize. Another word for māyā is avidyā, nescience.
Mind is ajnāna, meaning that it goes on superimposing the
false on the real. For a chemist, there is no difference between
100 grams of gold dust and a necklace weighing 100 grams,
but for a young lady it may mean all the difference. The
reality is one and the separation is dual. Separation causes
fear and violence. Duality is the cause of all violence. The
duality lasts only as long as you do not question it. The
moment you start investigating, it disappears.
Verse 4

आरभ्यते जीिजगत्परात्मतत्त्वाचिधानेन मतिं समस्तम् ।

इदिं त्रयिं यािदहिंमित स्यात्सिोत्तमाऽहम्मितशून्यिनष्ठा ।। 4
ārabhyate jīvajagatparātma-
tattvābhidhānena mataṁ samastam,
idaṁ trayaṁ yāvadahammati syāt
sarvottamā‟hammatiśunyaniṣṭhā.
samastam – all; matam – school of thought or religion;
jīva-jagat-parātma-tattva-abhidhānena – by promulgating the
individual, the world, and Īśvara; ārabhyate – is begun; idam–
this; trayam – triad; yāvadaham-mati – as long as the sense of
„me‟ (ego); syāt – is; aham-mati-śunya-niṣṭhā – abidance (in
the Self) divested of the ego; sarva-uttamā – the best of all.

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 All philosophies and religions begin by
promulgating the nature of individual, the jagat, and
Īśvara (constituting the whole of Reality). As long as
egoism remains, these three also remain (apart).
Abidance in the self where there is absence of egoism is
the best among all (kinds of abidance).
Mata – a school of thought or a religion
Mata can be a religion or a school of thought. At one time
in India, there were some schools of thought like sāṅkhya,
vaiśeṣika, and so on. The sāṅkhyas are the evolutionists and
the vaiśeṣikas are the atomists. All of these schools of thought
refer to dvaitins, the dualists. Then there were the ritualists,
who focused on karma, and who focused on upāsanam,
meditation. There were many other schools of thought, and all
the people that follow these schools were called Hindus. This
name came not because they all belonged to the same
religion, but because they all lived on one side of the river
Sindhu; it is a geographical term.
In later periods, people slowly moved away from
philosophy. There is some interest in philosophy, but mostly
people are religious. If you go to Vrindāvan, for example, it is
all about Śrī Kṛṣṇa‟s rāsa-līlās and exploits, temples, japa, and
so on. There are many cults within Vrindāvan, but you find
the Gīta only in some corner, as in an ashram. The Gita is not
in the main stream. The main stream is only the popular
religion. The word mata initially referred to a school of
thought, but later it acquired religious connotation such as
Vaiṣnavism, Śaivism, etc. In Vaiṣnavism itself there are
different sects. Śaivism also has many sects.

71
 When we study Sri Sankara's bhāṣya, we come across
many schools of thought discussed, such as sāṅkhya,
vaiśeṣika, or kṣaṇika-vijñāna-vāda, and also their refutation.
We do not find any mention of the religious sects in the
bhāṣya. Therefore, mata meant a school of thought in earlier
times. Because Ramana Maharshi lived in modern times,
matam could also refer to religions like Hinduism,
Christianity, etc.
All schools of thought and religions have the same basic
approach
Therefore, whether mata is a school of thought or a
religion, it begins by proclaiming the trinity: the individual,
the universe and Īśvara. The sāṅkhya school of thought
accepts jīva and jagat, but not Īśvara. The yoga school accepts
Īśvara in addition. The naiyyayikas and vaiśeṣikas also have
their own definition of Īśvara who is the efficient cause of the
universe. They argue that atoms are the fundamental material
cause of this universe, and then there are jīvas who are
separate.
Every religion says jīvas are all different. In Vaiṣnavism,
for example, the jīva has to strive hard to acquire merit in
order to go to Vaikuṇṭha, the God‟s abode. Vishnu, the God,
is the creator of this world and the world is real. So they have
their own scheme of cosmology. Śaivites have a similar
scheme, too. They are competitors of the Vaiṣnavas. They put
Śiva in the place of Viṣṇu, and Kailāsa in the place of
Vaikuṇṭha. Both are essentially the same except for the names
and a few other details. The common point among all the
religions is that all of them proclaim jīva, jagat, and Īśvara but
72
according to their own version. These philosophers and
religionists have been discussing, disputing and refuting each
other for hundreds of years, with no agreement on the
specifics.
Ārabhyate --- Sri Ramana Maharshi has covered the
general essence of all schools of thought of ancient India and
all religions in the modern world in his very interesting and
meticulous observation. There are a dozen major religions
and another dozen major schools of thought. Which of them
is correct? We would never be able to settle that! We would
waste our whole life in that disputation. Every religious head
believes that God is an individual, himself another individual
and all others are individuals.
Your vision of the world is determined by your vision of
yourself
Your vision of the world depends upon the vision of
yourself. If you feel at peace, you will find that the world is at
peace. What you call the world is a projection of your own
mind. You see yourself as a person, so there are persons all
around. You are a human being, so there are humans and non-
humans around. You are a living being, so there are living
and non-living beings all around. You are a male, so there are
males and females around. You are a Hindu, so there are
Hindus and non-Hindus around. You are a Brahmin, and then
there are Brahmins and non-Brahmins around.
Your are a person, so God is another person; you are a
weak person, but God is a very strong person, but still a
person. You know very little, but God knows a lot. You live

73
for some time, but God lives forever. Thus, your idea of
yourself determines your conception of God, and your idea of
yourself determines your understanding of the world in which
you live. The jagat and Īśvara are in fact not entities that are
understood or formulated independently of the jīva. You tell
me about your God; I will tell you what kind of person you
are. Suppose you say that God punishes the wicked, then you
are a violent person; you have a feeling of hurt. Suppose you
say that God rewards the devotees, then you are looking for
some reward from God.
Similarly, if you tell me what kind of world you are in, I
will tell you the kind of person you are. If you say there is no
peace in the world and it is all in conflict, it means that you
are a person in conflict. There is a verse: antaḥ śītalayatāṁ hi
sarvaṁ śītalam bhavet , 'if it is cool inside, then everything
becomes cool.' Sri Ramana Maharshi just comes to the crux
of the thing without getting caught in the names and forms of
the multiple schools of thought, multiple religions and their
disputations, etc. They may be disputing for millennia, but
they will never reach any conclusion about it. That topic will
also come in the next verse.
All of these schools of thought may appear different
outwardly, but all of them have the same thesis and offer the
same thing to people. They proclaim the tattva – the nature,
reality, or essence – of the individual person, of the jagat, and
of God. The essence of the jagat and God is indeed
determined by the essence of the individual, and therefore, the
formulation of the jagat and God is based upon the
formulation of the individual.
74
Isolated ego in a separate body
Yāvad-ahaṁ-mati syāt – aham here means the ego, the
persona, the body-mind identified isolated person, as it is
understood in the world in general and in the religious world
in particular. A separate, isolated ego in a separate body is the
ahaṁ-mati in the present context, not in the pure sense of „I
am‟. Yāvadahaṁmati is a compound word, yāvatī ahaṁ-
matiḥ, meaning, as long as there is the sense of ego.
When there is a jīva, then jagat and Īśvara must also be
explained
So long as you look at yourself as an isolated ego in a
separate body, there will be a world other than you in which
you live, and then there will be a God that is related to the
world and yourself in some way. How is he related to the
world? How did he create the world? Did he create it? If so,
what was the material from which he created it? When did he
create it? These questions make religions and schools of
thought proliferate. But fundamentally, the crux of the matter
is that as long as an isolated ego persists in a separate body,
there will be two other entities: jagat and Īśvara. By the way,
please note that I said 'persists,' not 'exists.' We do not know
whether it exists or not, just as the heroine in a movie does
not exist on the screen but persists on the screen, dancing and
doing many things.
Now you are obliged to answer the questions what is the
jagat and what is Īśvara. And if a large number of people
follow what you say, then you are a religious head, or the
originator of a religion. If nobody follows you, then there is

75
no religion. Many such religious ideas arise and disappear. In
India it happens by the day. All schools of thought and
religions are obliged to explain their stance on the above.
All issues resolve when the ego is resolved
Suppose that the ego is absent? Then, instead of dealing
with the issue superficially – whether this school says this or
that school says something else, asking which is right and
which is wrong – we come to the very crux of the matter,
namely, the fact that all the superficial divisions, refutations,
definitions and counter definitions are valid only as long as
the ego persists.
If we examine our own experience, we see that in deep
sleep there is no isolated ego and a separate body. You are
what you are. Nobody can know or define what you are in the
sleep, it is something indescribable. You love it without
knowing what it is exactly and you do not feel that you do not
know it. Were you unable to enjoy sleep because you did not
know what sleep is? No. You need not know it – it is
unknown and unknowable – and you merge in that sleep.
Whatever it is, you are happy. And if you miss it, you are the
most unhappy person in this world.
The ego resolves in the sleep; it comes up the next
morning again. It is like a creeper: it turns into a seed and
comes up again after the first rain. After the first rain in an
arid landscape, we can see the glory of life all around. This is
how the ego functions: in sleep it remains as a seed ego, and
the next morning it sprouts out. The moment it sprouts, we
have the jagat and paramātmā. Thus, jagat and paramātmā are

76
separate only when the aham-mati, I-sense, is there. This
point never strikes to the religious mind. What is the fate of
all these schools of thought, philosophers discussing and
debating endlessly, all these opinions and refutations, etc.
when this aham-mati merges in the unknown? They may
argue all day long, but in sleep nothing is sensed, the I-sense,
the world or the Lord.
Ego resolves in tamas in sleep and in sattva in waking
In sleep, the ahaṁ-mati resolves into the darkness of
ignorance and comes up the next morning. But suppose the
ahaṁ-mati resolves while remaining awake and fully alert.
Where does it resolve then? It resolves into the sattva. In the
language of the guṇas, ahaṁ-mati is rajas. In sleep the rajo-
guṇa resolves into tamo-guṇa, so in sleep we remain ignorant
because no one would get enlightened in tamas. But when we
allow the ahaṁ-mati to resolve into sattva, the alertful
awareness, there is no jagat and Īśvara separately independent
of I-sense.
Niṣṭhā – abidance in the reality
This is a new ground, and no religion has ever explored
this ground. Religion explores the ground in which there is
always ahaṁ-mati, and subsequent to ahaṁ-mati there arise
Īśvara and jagat. Schools of thought are also exploring on the
same or similar ground in their own way. But when the ahaṁ-
mati is resolved into alertful awareness, jagat and Īśvara cease
to exist separately apart from alerful awareness. This
resolution of the ahaṁ-mati into alertful awareness is niṣṭhā,

77
abidance, thereby one becomes inwardly silent and the ego is
absent.
Three types of spiritual practice
There are different types of spiritual practices: in physical
worship, you worship God with flowers or whatever. There
are rituals, which could be a Hindu ritual or a Christian ritual
or of some other religion. Every religion has its own rituals
and every school of thought has its own methods. Then there
is the verbal worship in the form of recitation of a holy text. It
is generally understood that you recite what you know and
you know what you recite. Only then is it a spiritual practice;
otherwise it is no doubt a practice, but its value is much less
or questionable.
Then there is the mental worship, which is dhyāna,
meditation. There are elaborate meditations, like rūpa-dhyāna,
in which you meditate on a given form of God. Rūpa-dhyāna
is a bit arduous: the mind becomes tired because you have to
concentrate the mind on the given form and the mind
wanders. So you have to arrest the movement, which makes
the mind very tired. An easier way is to use śabda, sound.
You take a mantra and focus on the words, and their meaning.
This has its own issues, the mind still wanders, but it is much
better than rūpa-dhyāna.
Nididhyāsanam – the fourth practice
The above are the three forms of worship. Nididhyāsanam
is distinct from the mental worship. The abidance discussed
above, ahaṁ-mati-śūnya-niṣṭhā, the abidance devoid of I-
sense, comes under this category of nididhyāsanam. In the
78
three kinds of spiritual practices mentioned above (physical,
verbal, and mental), there is a categorization as ut, uttara, and
uttama, meaning good, better, and the best respectively.1 Then
arises the question, is this abidance a spiritual practice? If yes,
what is its place in this scheme? The answer to the question is
an emphatic yes! And it is sarva-uttama, superior to all the
other three.
It is superior because the ego is eliminated in it, and along
with it, the issues of jīva and jagat resolve forever. When the
ego resolves, you abide in that alertful awareness, the pure
caitanya, the reality. That reality alone is appearing under
different conditions as jīva, jagat, and paramātmā. The
conditionalities create an apparent difference. In this
abidance, all the conditionalities that create division in reality
are eliminated.
One appearing as three
The sense of the self, the body, and the world rise together
and sink together. You cannot have ego without body
identification. Therefore ego, the body, and the world all the
three rise and subside together – whether it is in sleep or in
meditation, nididhyāsanam. The ego is a particular
conditionality or an aspect of the reality. When that one
conditionality is crystallized, it creates the other
conditionalities in the Reality. Crystallization is also an
Upaniṣadic term, the Sanskrit word is saindhava-ghana, a

1
kāyavāṅmanaḥ kāryamuttamam, pūjanaṁ japaścintanaṁ kramāt
(Worship, japa, and meditation done with the body, speech, and mind
respectively, are most beneficial in that order) (Upadeśa-sāra, 4).
79
lump of salt; it comes from Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (4-5-
13).
This ego is one aspect, and therefore it calls for the whole.
Without the whole, how can there be a part? And without a
part, how can the whole be the whole? Therefore as the part is
in place, the whole, namely the jagat, arises simultaneously.
Then we are obliged to visualize a cause because both these
are effects; that cause is Īśvara. Now the three categories are
in place and the debate can start. These disputations will
never end and the religions will never agree with each other.
How can you make them agree with each other? It is like the
proverbial weighing of the frogs. As the weights are being
checked, a few of them will jump out!
Similarly, who can bring the dogmatic religions together?
It is just impossible because every religion is based on
egotism, „my religion.‟ The key to the whole blessed thing is
just allowing the ahaṁ-mati to resolve and abide peacefully in
yourself. That is the supreme spirituality.
Identify with the universal instead of the limited
You cannot have a sense of division unless you have a
sense of separate existence. One has to explore the question
of this sense of separate existence. For example, as I inhale
and exhale, I commune with the universal air. It is not
personal. The respiration, which is the source of life, is the
reflection of the all-pervasive universal in the limited. There
is never any separation from the whole.
The universal is so very obvious that we do not pay
attention to it. I am all the while connected very deeply and
80
intimately with the universal. Although inhalation and
exhalation are intrinsically universal, I take me as inhaling
and exhaling. Instead of identifying with the limited, I have to
see my oneness with the universal. The lungs are open to the
universal and there is no boundary between one‟s inhalation
and exhalation and the universal air. Where is the question of
within and without? Body is not the boundary. It is wrongly
taken as the boundary. This is how you create an isolated
existence for yourself.
This is the adhyāsa, wrong supposition or confusion. Here
is the situation in which the universal is reflected in the
limited. Then the confusion is that you ignore the universal
and identify with the limited. Yoga is the undoing of this
confusion and achieving communion with the universal.
When you end the identification with the limited, your
oneness with the universal is a foregone conclusion; you need
not create the oneness.
Therefore we have this meditation: be alert, inhale and
exhale, and visualize that „I am inhaling the vāyu which is
universal.‟ The ṛṣi in the Upaniṣad (Taittiriya, 1-1) declares:
namaste vāyo, tvameva pratyaks ̣a ṁ brahmāsi, 'Salutations
unto you, O Vāyu! You are the universal that I perceive
directly.‟ No proof is required, or you say that you yourself
are the proof. That is the prayer. This prayer should continue
as long as there is an identity with the limited. Then a stage
comes when the one who is praying and the one who is
prayed merge together. What can be a better spiritual practice
than this?

81
 Verse 5

सत्यिं मृषा िा चििददिं जडिं िा दुाः खिं सुखिं िेित मुधा िििादाः ।
अदृष्टलो ा िनरहिंप्रतीिताः िनष्ठाऽिि ल्पा परमाऽचखलेष्टा ।। 5
satyaṁ mṛṣā vā cididaṁ jaḍaṁ vā
duḥkhaṁ sukhaṁ veti mudhā vivādaḥ,
adṛṣṭalokā nirahaṁpratītiḥ
niṣṭhā‟vikalpā paramā‟khileṣṭā. 5
Satyam – real; mṛṣā – false; vā – or; cid – sentient; idam –
this; jaḍam – insentient; vā – or; duḥkam – sorrow; sukham –
joy; vā – or; iti – thus; vivādaḥ – disputation; mudhā – in
vain; adṛṣṭa-lokā – where the world is not seen; nirahaṁ-
pratītiḥ – without the 'I' thought; niṣṭhā – abidance; avikalpā
– free of division; paramā – supreme; akhila-iṣṭā – beneficial
or acceptable to all.
Arguments such as this world is real or false,
sentient or insentient, sorrowful or joyous, are to no
purpose. Abidance that is free of all this division,
without the „me‟ thought and in which the world is not
experienced, is the supreme state desirable and
acceptable to all.
Intellect can not find solution to the problem of Self-
knowledge
Generally we try to resolve the issues of life with reason
using intellect. That is how all technological progress
happens, i.e. through the application of intellect. However,
82
self-realization cannot be achieved thro‟ the intellect at all.
The intellect helps, the body also helps, but the solution
would not come from the intellect. In the Upanishadic
statement, satyaṁ jñānamanantaṁ brahma (Taittiriya, 2-1),
jñāna, knowledge, is neither perceptual nor inferential. It is
not the same as the cognitive knowledge obtained thro‟ the
mind. We use the mind to go beyond the mind because the
reality cannot be the known. Whatever we know is finite, and
hence unreal. If the real is infinite, you cannot know it by
your finite mind.
Do you know what infinity is? A high school student of
mathematics may answer, 'Yes, I know. It is the limit of 1/x
as x tends to zero.1 That is the question asked in a school
exercise, with the answers provided at the end of the book.
But if you meet a very experienced mathematics professor
and ask him the same question, he would say, 'I do not know.'
Knowledge of Atman is just like that. It cannot be reached or
grasped thro‟ intellect at all.
You have to pass through the trap of the intellect, which
we call vijñāna-maya.2 Having explored vijñāna-maya, the
doership, you leave it behind because Atman is anya, the
other and antara, the inner. Then you arrive at ānanda-maya,
the enjoyership. You leave the enjoyer also behind and go
forward to brahma pucchaṁ pratiṣhṭhā.3, the Brahman that is
the tail that stabilizes. Therefore it is not by means of the

1
The limit of the function f(x)=1/x as x approaches 0.
2
Reference to the pañca-kośa model (cf. Taittirīya Upaniṣad, 2.2.1 –
2.5.1)
3
Ibid.
83
intellect at all. I am emphasizing this here because you have
to determine the point up to which the intellect helps you, and
draw a line where it can no longer help. If you don‟t draw the
line, you will be caught in the trap of the intellect and you
cannot move forward.
The goal is realization of the truth, not scholarship
Satyaṁ mṛṣā vā, is this world real or unreal? Now the
intellect begins to operate. It could be really simple; but the
intellect can make it complex, something like fifty-fifty, real-
unreal, a sort of dvaita-advaita. This is the vāda, disputation, a
game of the intellect, intellectual gymnastics. There is vāda,
meaning somebody says something. Vāda, discussion, is a
useful tool to get rid of misconceptions. But it could quickly
degenerate into vivāda, a disputation; then it becomes
bondage.
When we start talking, we create a verbal universe, in
which nothing is black and white, it is all gray, and we are not
sure whether the pot is real or the clay is real, or which is
unreal, or which is partly or halfway real. It is a universe of
words, ideas, concepts, and abstractions, nicely interwoven
and interdependent. Pot is different but not different, it is the
same but not same, different but same.
There are things sentient and there are things insentient in
the world. What is the origin, sentient or insentient?
Cosmologists settle with the insentient. When you look
around, everything, fire, air, etc., is insentient. Therefore the
origin must be insentient. But, the universe is not chaotic; it is
orderly and systematic. It is an intelligent universe with

84
inbuilt rules. That points to sentience as the cause or origin of
the universe. Therefore, we cannot settle that the cause is
insentient. It must be left open. The dualists argue that the
cause is both sentient and insentient. They talk of two causes,
material and efficient, insentient and sentient respectively.
The disputations have no end. We should not misunderstand
that Sri Ramana Maharshi is against inquiry, discussion and
study. However, he exhorts us that our goal must be the
realization of truth, not scholarship, not intellectual
embellishment.
Words create more words, whereas reality is silent
What is Vedanta? It is the end portion of Veda. But it
means something more: it is the culmination of Veda in
Vedanta. Vedanta is in fact the ending of the process of Veda,
knowing, itself. It is the ending of the process and mechanism
of knowledge itself. Veda takes you to the very frontiers of
knowledge and then declares aprāpya manasā saha , and the
words turn back along with the mind. Reality cannot be
reached with the intellect, because the reality is not confined
to the frontiers of knowledge, which we acquire with the
intellect; it is beyond all that.
Then what does Veda do? Veda tells you all that is to be
known, and then says the real thing is not something to be
known. In this way, the dynamics of knowledge proceeds.
Words end, the intellect surrenders, and you become silent.
Now you are in the embrace of the reality. We are not talking
of the silence of an ignorant person. It is for the one who has
known and known, and then knows that what is known cannot
be the truth. Thus the person comes to know. Otherwise how
85
do you explain the Upaniṣad statement (Kena, 2-3) yasya
amataṁ tasya mataṁ matam yasya na veda sah ̣ , one who
declares he knows does not know, and the one who says it is
unknown and unknowable, he alone knows?
The Upanishad (Kena, 2-3) further explains: avijnātaṁ
vijānatāṁ vijnātamavijānatām, you will know the truth when
you give up the effort to know. As long as you are trying to
understand, you will not know it. You are truly in your
svarūpa only when you are not even trying to know or to
understand. For example, suppose you try to understand
silence. Silence is unfathomable. How can you estimate it
with your intellect? Whatever your intellect grasps becomes
limited by the very act of grasping. It becomes an object of
the intellect and therefore it becomes limited. It is like the
tongs that are used to get hold of the objects – the tongs can
hold any object, but they cannot hold the hand that handles
the tongs.
Duḥkhaṁ sukhaṁ vā, is the world painful or pleasurable?
The worldly people run after the pleasures of the world, and
are subject to misery in the process. Is happiness outside
Atman, or is it an attribute of Atman or is it the essential
nature of Atman? Some thinkers argue that happiness is an
attribute of Atman, and therefore Atman is saguṇa, having
attributes, not nirguṇa, devoid of attributes. These arguments
will never end. The disputations will continue as long as the
world exists. There are countless theories. Which theory is
right?

86
The theory is not important, only how the theory is put to
test is important
All the theories are attempts at explaining the inexplicable
reality. It is not the theory that matters, it is only the way you
test the theory that matters. For example, suppose you take
bhakti as the way for you. You understand what bhakti is, and
test it; you will reach mokṣa. Or you take karma-yoga: first
study and understand karma-yoga thoroughly. Understand
what Śrī Kṛṣṇa says and what Sri Śaṅkara says. Then put it to
test in life; you will be liberated. Śrī Kṛṣṇa says (Gita, 3-20)
this in so many words: karmaṇaiva hi saṁsiddhimāsthitā
janakādayaḥ, for Janaka and others strove to attain liberation
through action itself.
Therefore you can take up any path, such as karma, bhakti,
or jñāna. As long as you think karma, bhakti, and jñāna are
independent paths, you have not understood the truth fully.
There must be a starting point, so take any one of them and
proceed. When you correctly understand, karma serves the
purpose, jñāna or bhakti also serves the purpose equally well.
But if you worship God with a worldly attitude with all the
baggage of desires and fears, bhakti does not serve the
purpose; in fact, it could become a problem. Or if you say
jñāna is the answer and constantly engage in intellectual
gymnastics, it also becomes a problem. Therefore, take any
path you like, and truly be earnest and honest about it. Then
the attainment of the goal is certain. Therefore mudhā
vivādaḥ, the disputations are a waste. You practice any path,
know it, and live it. Otherwise, one learns many words and
ideas about Atman, without ever knowing what Atman is.
87
The truth cannot be known through words
Having spoken in so many words, Veda has reached its last
word, which is yato vāco nivartante , aprāpya manasā saha .1
We can illustrate this with an anecdote: once upon a time, all
the words assembled together and decided, 'Come on, let us
go and reach the truth!' Then one elderly word, a wise word
among them, said, 'let us take the mind also with us, it could
be helpful.' The mind also joined and made an effort, but they
all failed. The truth cannot be known through words because
only insight will reveal the truth. Words cannot take you
there, although they are helpful along the way. But now that
we have learned enough words, we must look within.
Words are meant for taking you there, but they cannot
make it. They cannot grasp it and put it in your hand; they can
only take you there. It is like a fellow who has to go up a
Palmyra tree and somebody is pushing him up from below.
But a stage comes when no further pushing is possible. Now
he has to climb up himself. He stops looking down at the
person pushing him; he looks within and discovers strength
and moves forward. Similarly, even with the efforts of the
mind, the truth cannot be reached. Then stop depending on
the words and the mind, and invoke the inner intelligence.
You have to search and discover the truth within. It is
neither easy nor difficult. Try – if you try and fail, then try
again. Otherwise, you may quote the scriptures perfectly and
be brilliant in discussions, but if you do not have the vision,

1
that from which words, along with the mind (their concepts), return
without reaching (TaittirīyaUpaniṣad, 2.4.1)
88
you remain a bag of tricks. Speak less, be silent, and do not be
argumentative. Be inconspicuous and humble. Be an
insignificant person altogether. Be simple and search within
so you will find that deep insight in yourself.
Nahi-nindā-nyāya – censuring one to praise another
In Sanskrit there is a nyāya, logical convention, called
nahi-nindā-nyāya, which we follow in understanding a text. In
this, one is belittled in order to glorify another. For example, a
person who has received his BS degree comes to me and says,
'I want to go for a job and get married.' He is in a hurry to get
married, so he needs a job. I say, 'Postpone the marriage.
Study for your MS degree because a BS degree is not a
qualification at all. A PhD is even better. But anything less
than an MS is not a qualification at all.' Now suppose a ten-
year old kid hears this discussion and then says, 'A BS degree
is no qualification at all, therefore I will not study.' How does
it sound? It is wrong, of course. The convention is: nahi nindā
nindyāṁ nindituṁ pravartate api tu vidheyaṁ stotum.1 When
I said that a BS degree is no qualification at all, my aim is not
to denigrate a BS degree; it is to glorify the MS degree. In the
present context, the idea is not to belittle the scriptures.
Instead, we are trying to glorify the niṣṭhā, firm abidance.
Sādhana must include śravaṇa and contemplation
Words are okay, in their place but you reach a point when
you are saturated with words. Even while studying the

1
“In this logical convention, there is no denigration intended; the
purpose is instead to praise that which is to be mandated.” (Madhusūdana
Sarasvati‟s ṭīkā to the Bhagavad Gītā, 12.13)
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scriptures, if you listen to the śāstra and assume that you have
accomplished, you are caught in words.
Therefore you should not only listen to scriptures, but also
reflect, which consists of reading a few pages slowly of the
scripture and then close the book and contemplate. The words
have helped if they inspire you to go beyond them, otherwise
they have trapped you. For example, we take medicine in
order to stop taking medicine. That is called a cure. Suppose
you take medicine in order to continue taking medicine, that
is not the cure. Words are like that.
Words do not reveal the truth
Words can lead to more words. They can create an idea but
do not reveal the truth. It is wrong to assume that
accumulating words and ideas would lead us to the truth.
Words can help in discussions and disputations to prove that
one is right and the other wrong, but that is not the purpose
here. Nor becoming a scholar is of any value. That is all the
way an ego trip.
Once the words have revealed the meaning, one has to go
beyond the words. One has to gain that adṛṣṭa-loka, the place
where one does not see the loka, world of names and forms.
There are no words and hence there is no mind. The world of
names and forms does not contain the truth.
Resolving the ego through vairāgya (dispassion)
When you are no longer caught in names and forms, there
is also nirahaṁ-pratīti, resolution of the ego. You will not be
able to erase the ego as long as you are attached to the things,

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another name for the names and forms, of the world. That is
so because in the subject-object duality, the ego is the subject
and the names and forms are the object. When you are
attached to an object, it establishes you as an egotistic entity –
they go together. Attachment belongs to the ego. It is
impossible to drop the ego while keeping the attachment to
the object. The non-attachment to the objects of the world,
thereby erasing the ego, is vairāgya, dispassion.
'Who am I?' – the viveka question
Once you have practiced vairāgya and can see things
without attachment, then the object drops off, leaving you as
pure 'I am.' You ask the question, 'Who am I?' This question
promotes viveka, discrimination. You do not want to supply
the answer from the mind. Do not try to give such an answer
as, say, 'I am the father of two children,' etc! There cannot be
anything sillier than that. Whatever answer comes from the
mind, it would be a word associated with a thought, which is
nāma-rūpa. When you do not supply the answer, the subject 'I'
stands without the object. The subject cannot survive alone
and therefore the ego recedes.
'What am I upto?' – the vairāgya question
One has to learn to ask oneself the question 'what am I
upto?' For example, suppose you are thinking of going to a
party. First you may ask yourself, 'What am I upto?' and then
see what happens. The question in the heart is like a seed in
the ground. It appears lifeless, but there is tremendous energy
in it. It will break apart even the concrete structure to bring
out the sprout! Śanaih ̣ ś anaiḥ, slowly slowly – that is its

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power. The seed is never in a hurry, it just remains firm and
the concrete breaks. Similarly, that question, 'What am I
upto?' is like a weapon in demolishing the frivolous from life.
The absence of the ahaṁ-pratīti is called niṣṭhā, abidance.
This niṣṭhā is avikalpa, free of division, because the subject-
object division always comes with the nāma-rūpa and the ego
sense. That is the supreme spiritual practice. It will do good to
all people, no matter what school of thought or religion they
may subscribe to. Its purpose is to test what we have learned,
rather than aimlessly adding more and more „knowledge‟ to
the brain cells. This approach is very characteristic of Sri
Ramana Maharshi.
Verse 6

सरूपबुििजृगतीश्वरे ि सरूपधीरात्मिन यािदस्तस्त ।

अरूप आत्मा यिद ाः प्रपश्येत् सा दृिष्टरे ाऽनिचधिहृ पूणाृ।। 6
sarūpabuddhirjagatīśvare ca sarūpadhīrātmani yāvadasti,
arūpa ātmā yadi kaḥ prapaśyet sā dṛṣṭirekā‟navadhirhi pūrṇā.
Yāvat - as long as; ātmani – towards (with reference to)
oneself; sarūpa-dhīḥ – idea (conclusion) of form; asti – there
is; (so long); jagati - towards (with reference to) the world; ca
– and; īśvare - towards (with reference to) the Lord; sarūpa-
buddhiḥ - the idea (conclusion) of having form; yadi – if;
ātmā – the self; arūpaḥ – formless; kaḥ – who; prapaśyet –
would see; hi – because (indeed); sā – that; dṛṣṭiḥ –vision ;
ekā – one; anavadhiḥ – limitless; pūrṇā – complete.

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 As long as there is the idea or conclusion that I am
with form (i.e. I am the body), there will be the idea that
the world and the Lord are also with form. If the self is
without form, who will see? (The seer-seen division
disappears.) That (divisionless) vision is indeed one,
limitless and complete.
How a form appears
The word rūpa, form, is rather mundane, but it is not a big
thing. When you say „pot,‟ it means a material – such as clay
– in a particular shape. But is this shape intrinsic to the clay,
or is it something that we superimpose? That is the point.
Someone who does not know a pot does not see the pot, but
he still sees the clay. From this, we can infer that the pot-
shape is in the mind, which is obvious because what all you
really see is clay.
This is a topic related to advanced physics. There are
books written about how we end up seeing a pot, so we
should examine the matter with a scientific outlook. For
example, you are standing before a mirror and you see a form
in the mirror. It is either your image, or you may even see the
image of the pot. The question is, what do you have in the
mirror? Is there anything in the mirror? No, there is nothing in
the mirror. It just reflects light, and the light reflected by the
mirror does not have a three-dimensional character to it. A
mirror is a two-dimensional surface and the light is reflected
from that surface. That is the input or stimulus, and what do
you get as the output? Is there any connection between the
two? The input is a pencil of light thrown at the eyes
instantly, and a mirror just reflects whatever light falls upon
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it. Then this light falls on the retina and creates a sensation. In
fact, it creates a flow of electric pulses (sensations) that are
integrated by the mind.
Pot cognition depends on time
This flow can be shown by an experiment: a pot is kept in
a dark room so you do not see it. The experiment consists of
first throwing or focusing light for five seconds. If you do
this, you will see the pot. If you reduce the duration to one
second, you will still see the pot. But if you further reduce the
pulse duration to three-fourths of a second, you would not see
the pot. As a result of this experiment, we can infer that
seeing the pot is not an instantaneous phenomenon, it is in
time and so there must be duration. If the duration is too
short, you do not see the pot. There must be some duration,
about a second, for seeing to take place.
In physics or in optics, a second is a good amount of time.
Even in running competitions in the Olympics, a runner wins
not by a second or even one-tenth of a second; by one-
hundredth of a second. Similarly here, eyesight requires
duration, so a pot is not a thing that you see instantly. A pot is
an idea generated in the mind by a flow of optical sensations
having certain duration. This flow of optical sensations must
be established, only then do you see the pot.
The point is that when you are looking at the mirror, the
light thrown by a two-dimensional reflecting surface of the
mirror falls upon the retina and a flow of optical sensations is
established. Therefore, we see things in space and in time.
There cannot be a thing without space and time. It is a

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package: object, space and time. We cannot separate one from
the other two.
All form is in the mind
Space and time are mental categories. Even the „pot‟ is a
mental category. The brain‟s software must have the pot in its
memory, only then can you see the pot. That is why the
Upanishad (Chāndogya, 6.1.4) says, vācārambhaṇaṁ vikaro
nāmadheyam. The object is articulated by the speech, i.e. it
has its origin in speech. The pot does not begin in clay, it
begins in the mind and then conveyed in the speech. The
whole form is in the mind, none in the mirror. The mirror‟s
contribution is only to reflect a beam of light for some time.
The point is that we should rise above this conditioning of
names and shapes. For example, we see a person, a form, a
human being. But that is not enough for the mind; it wants to
put the person into a category: friend, foe, student, teacher,
and so on. The mind has all kinds of categories, which are
rūpa. It is like sorting mail and putting it in different slots.
This tendency can be called nāma-rūpa-buddhi (seeing
everything in terms of names and forms). You cannot have
rūpa without association of space and time.
We have also to understand that the mind actually
contributes space-time; space and time are mental categories,
they are not in the light that you are seeing. You see only
light, you do not see anything else. The form comes from the
mind because space, time, and causation are mental
categories. In fact, what you call the world is altogether a
projection of the mind. There is no world other than the

95
mental world. Ramana Maharshi used to say, 'When the mind
moves, there is a world. When the mind does not move, there
is no world.' This is dṛṣṭi-sṛṣṭi-vāda.1
Name and form create divisions
The nāma-rūpa-buddhi dictates our lives. So long as there
is sarūpa-dhīḥ, the notion that everything including oneself
has a form and a name that are real, the world and Īśvara
consisting of names and forms are real. For example, if I see
myself as a Dutchman, then the world is divided into Dutch
and non-Dutch. A form need not be physical all the time. A
pot is a physical form, but 'Dutch' is a mental form. Similarly,
'I am a human being' means the creation is now divided into
two-legged and four-legged forms, humans and animals, and
so on. In this way, you divide the creation because first you
see yourself as something, and only then the division is in
place. If you reduce it to 'I am a living being,' the universe
still consists of living and non-living beings and so the rūpa
persists till one discovers that one is all Existence.
Once someone asked, 'Is God nirguṇa, without attributes,
or saguṇa, with attributes?' I responded, 'I will tell you about
God, but first you tell me about yourself. Are you saguṇa or
nirguṇa?' He said, 'I am saguṇa,' so I replied, 'God is also
saguṇa.' If you have a form, then God also has a form.
Another question: is heaven real? I will answer your question,
first you tell me, is this world real? If this world is real, then

1
The theory of simultaneous creation, i.e. the world exists because it is
seen.
96
heaven is also real. If this world is unreal, then heaven also is
unreal.
Sri Śaṅkara comments in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (8-5-4):
jāgradviṣayā api mānasapratyayā bhinirvṛttā e va --
mānasānāṁ bāhyānāṁ ca viṣayāṇām
itaretarakaryakāraṇatvamishyata eva -- yadyapi bāhyā eva
mānasā mānasā eva c a bāhyā nānṛtatvam teṣām kadā cidapi
svātmani bhavati,1 objects perceived in the waking state are
also accomplished by mental ideas only -- things mental and
external are related to each other as cause and effect --
although the mental originate from the external and the
external from the mind, still, in one‟s own Self (in the essence
of being shining as knowing) they are never false (when a
rope is seen as a snake, the vision is not false in its totality).
So long as one has the idea of a form, one sees the form.
For example, a child does not see what all the elders see,
though the sensations are same. The mother puts the idea of
forms into the child‟s mind gradually and then it starts seeing
forms. Therefore, as long as nāma-rūpa-buddhi is there, the
jagat is full of nāma-rūpas, and that extends even to the God
that people worship. Your buddhi determines the nature of
God that you worship and your buddhi determines the nature
of the world in which you live.
Dividing jīva and Īśvara is like dividing a river
The division between jīva and Īśvara is like a barrier
erected by putting two posts in the river and tying a horizontal
bamboo to those posts. This side of the bamboo is called

1
Translation by Sri Swami Gambhirananda.
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tīrtha, the bathing ghat, and the other side of the bamboo is
called nadī, river. Now the river is divided into two parts, one
small and the other big, because of the bamboo. There are
several differences: the tīrtha is where you take bath, not the
nadī; the tīrtha is small and the nadī is big; the tīrtha is
stagnant or slow moving and the nadī is a swift flow; tīrtha is
muddy, whereas the nadī is clean; and so on. The division
between jīva and Īśvara is similarly put in place by the
bamboo of the ego. On this side of the ego is the body-
identified person. And the creator, a superior person, a big
person, is on the other side. The Yoga Sutras (1-24) says the
same thing in other words as puruṣa-viśeṣa, a special person.
The division between jīva and Īśvara is put in place because
the jīva takes himself to be of a particular nāma-rūpa, and
therefore Īśvara is of another nāma-rūpa.
Similarly, the division between pot and clay is created
because the nāma 'pot' is associated with a rūpa in the mind.
Pot is small, clay is big; pot is an effect, while clay is the
cause; pot is useful, clay is not useful; and so on. By the time
you bring in the idea of utility, you are well into saṁsāra and
you cannot come out of that pot-buddhi anymore because it is
useful, you can carry coffee in it and therefore the pot is real,
coffee is real, I am real, everything is real, and God is a
special person. All because it is useful! In this way, you are
determining the nature of the world in which you live by your
own estimation of yourself, and you are determining the
nature of God that you worship by your own estimation of
yourself.

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 This is how the division takes place between oneself, the
jagat, and Īśvara. It is there as long as you take yourself as
somebody in particular. The idea that 'I am an Indian,' 'I am
an American' etc. indicates that I am self-conscious. I become
self-conscious by adding an attribute to myself. In doing so, I
have divided myself from the whole, like that bamboo divides
the Gangā. The self-consciousness or particularity that you
attribute to yourself is an obsession. We are obsessed with
being something in particular, which creates another
obsession that God is the other particular. Now the division is
irrevocable.
Rūpa-buddhi is superimposition born out of ignorance
Then what is Atman? This rūpa-buddhi is a
superimposition born out of ignorance, an inability to
understand the truth about the nameless and formless reality.
It is like looking in a mirror: as we have already seen that the
eyesight and the mind together play a trick and we end up
seeing a three-dimensional image in space where it is just not.
Space appears to be outside, but outside and inside are
themselves belong to imagination. You have inside and
outside only when the ego, born out of identification with the
body, is in place. It is like the bamboo that appears to divide
the river. Unless there is a self-conscious entity, there is no
division of inside and outside. In pure being there is no inside
and outside, no division at all. Therefore the names and forms
are purely from the stand point of one‟s dṛṣṭi, a way of seeing.
They are a trick of the eyesight and the mind.

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No nāma-rūpa without identification
The attitude of identifying readily with something or the
other creates and nurtures nāma-rūpa-buddhi. Unless there is
identification of the self with the non-self, there is no nāma-
rūpa. If I identify with my house, I become a house-owner.
Then somebody else is the tenant. We identify first with the
body, then with the mind. Some people identify with some
'astral body' – as if this body is not enough to identify with!
We are obsessed with the body
Did we ever question this sarūpa-dhī, the belief that I am
the body? The body is born and dies, but as long as it is alive
it attracts our attention and fascinates us so completely that
one does not perceive one‟s real nature at all. The body is
male, so I am male; the body is beautiful, so I am beautiful.
The body is the son of so-and-so, belonging to some lineage.
That is a big thing, lineage, and there are genealogists. You
go to them and they will prepare the genealogy of your family
and give it to you for a fee. Then you can look at it and say,
'My seventh-generation grandfather was named Mr. Johnson.'
Does this 'Mr. Johnson' have any meaning whatsoever? I am
completely confused by that. The form is entirely in your
imagination. If it is my father or my grandfather, maybe I can
understand. But a person of the same lineage seven
generations ago has the name Subban, so now what?
People are totally fascinated by their attachment to the
body and they never question 'am I the body?' It is like one
seeing the surface of the ocean and completely forgetting the
immensity beneath. I think I have a rūpa, and therefore every

100
other blessed one must have a rūpa. That is how the sarūpa-
dhī operates.
Wisdom is seeing beyond name and form
Arūpa ātmā, Atman has no form. It is the vision, like
opening the third eye, the inner eye, jnāna-netra, the eye of
wisdom. We are just looking at the surface of the ocean and
getting fascinated by the waves. Where is the wave? Once I
went out on the ocean in a boat just to understand what this
wave is. I stood in the boat, it was rocking a lot, and I was
looking all around. I was trying to see waves, but it is very
difficult to see waves because it is such a marvelous wide
open sheet of water, and that alone attracted my attention. I
struggled to see waves. If you insist that 'I have to see waves,'
you will end up seeing waves. But the fact is there are no
waves, there is only water. The human mind is caught in
space-time, so it sees the water through the prism of space-
time and therefore it sees waves.
The prism of space-time and causation
When you look at the sun through a prism, you find seven
colors. Similarly, you look at the world through the prism
with three surfaces of space, time, and causation. The ocean is
the cause and the waves are the effect. When you see through
that prism, you see waves and through rational analysis and
inference, you conclude that the ocean is the cause! But from
the ocean‟s standpoint there are no waves, but only water.
Waves are from the human mind‟s standpoint and they are
transferred to the ocean or the water thereof.

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 Atman is arūpa, formless. It is nameless, spaceless,
timeless, uncaused and itself not causing anything. It is pure
awareness, and all else is a projection of the body-mind on the
canvas of space-time. Even though the projection in itself is
never real, it is indeed related to the reality. When you give
up the nāma-rūpa-buddhi, it is to your gain; you gain
nameless and formless Atman. In that there is no division of
the knower and the known. The subject and object resolve in
the one-without-a-second Awareness absolute. In that who
sees what with what?
People want to know something about themselves in terms
of particulars. Suppose you are taught that you are nothing
but the sense organs can perceive and the mind can conceive.
It is likely that you would not be satisfied. You may want
yourself to be something that is perceivable and or
conceivable, like 'I am the body, male, etc.' or 'I am a
brāhmaṇa, etc.' You can always imagine some category and
put yourself in that category.
It is very difficult for people to understand that you are the
undivided, indivisible, timeless, spaceless, uncaused, pure
awareness. That vision is unlike anything else. It is anavadhi,
meaning there are no limitations in that vision. So long as you
take the shadow as real, you will be running after the shadow.
But when the shadow is seen as only a shadow, you stop
dwelling on it. Suppose you make your shadow in sunlight
fall on a weighing scale. What will be the weight of the
shadow? Zero. Nāma-rūpa-buddhi is a shadow-like buddhi.
As long as you hang onto nāma-rūpa buddhi, you are
following the shadow. Stop following the shadow – when you
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turn around, there is the light of the sun, which overwhelms
you. That vision is one, free from all limitations, because it is
pūrṇā, infinite. It is infinite in the sense that there is no finite
division in it. So realize that as your essential Self and be
liberated.
Verse 7

यत्पञ्च ोशात्म मस्तस्त दे हिं तदन्तरा ि िं िुिनिं ि ास्तस्त ।

दे हिं ििना पञ्चििधिं तदे तत्पश्यस्तन्त े िा िुिनिं िणन्तु ।। 7
yatpañcakośātmakamasti dehaṁ
tadantarā kiṁ bhuvanaṁ cakāsti,
dehaṁ vinā pañcavidhaṁ tadetat
paśyanti ke vā bhuvanaṁ bhaṇantu. 7
yat – which; pañca-kośa-ātmakam – made up of five
sheaths; deham – body; asti – is; tad-antarā – without that;
bhuvanam – world; kiṁ cakāsti – does shine?; pañca-vidhaṁ
– fivefold; dehaṁ vinā – without the body; tat – that; etat –
this; bhuvanam – world; ke vā – who; paśyanti – perceive;
bhaṇantu – may say.
Without the body consisting of five sheaths, does the
world come to light? (it does not). Please come forward
and tell me, without that body consisting of the five
sheaths, who perceives this world? (none).
The unreal nature of the world
From this verse onwards, Maharshi takes up the topic of
the unreal nature of the world. This follows dṛṣṭi-sṛṣṭi-vāda,

103
not sṛṣṭi-dṛṣṭi-vāda.1 This is Maharishi‟s method: sṛṣṭi-dṛṣṭi is
mentioned here, but eventually the movement is towards
dṛṣṭi-sṛṣṭi-vāda. Dṛṣṭi-sṛṣṭi-vāda indicates that the world is
unreal; it just does not exist, and yet it appears. There may be
something like the rabbit‟s horn (only a word or phrase) that
does not exist and also does not appear; no problem. But here
the world does not exist, and yet appears; a big issue. That is
what we call māyā. If it exists and appears, you do not need
māyā for explanation. If something does not exist and does
not appear, then also we need not invoke māyā.
World is not existential; world is observational,
experiential. When you say a pot, it is your cognition of the
pot. A thing called pot does not exist independent of your
cognition. Cognition of the pot is entirely the movement of
the eyesight and the mind. Without eyesight and mind, you
cannot have a pot. If you say that even without eyes and
mind, there is a pot, then philosophy is not for you.
There is no pot without pot cognition
Sri Ramana Maharshi explained this vision of idealism in a
unique way. We say there is a pot, there is the world. The pot
does not say, 'I am a pot;' the world does not say, „I am the
world.‟ This means that the pot or the world does not exist
independently of your cognition of the pot or the world. It is
very simple.

1
dṛṣṭi is the consciousness that is witnessing; sṛṣṭi is the existence
which is being witnessed. Vāda is the rationale, the process of establishing
the truth.
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 One more thing can be added to explain the same vision.
This is the great question from a Zen master: a tree has fallen
in the forest. There is nobody around. Will there be the sound
of the tree falling? No. Another illustration can be added to
explain this. In a theater, the movie was started automatically
by the computer at the appointed time, but there was no
audience, not even one person was present. Now the question
is: would there be a movie on the screen? The answer is no.
This is the dṛṣṭi-sṛṣṭi-vāda of Vedanta. This is also
quantum physics. Once I was reading a basic text of quantum
physics. There it was said (author‟s paraphrasing): 'you are
out walking and you look at the moon. The moon is there
only when you look at the moon. When you are not looking at
the moon, there is no moon.‟ The quantum physicists seem to
arrive at the same conclusion.
The five sheaths
Maharshi asks: does the world shine without the body? No.
As one wakes up, first comes the experience of the body, and
only then the world shines. What is the body then? Pañca-
kośa-ātmakaḥ – the body, gross and subtle put together,
includes the physical body, as well as the numerous levels of
the subtle body. It is the construct of five sheaths. Sri Śaṅkara
gives the example of a rice grain with multiple husks in
Taittrīya bhāṣya (2-2).
Here we are obviously not talking of a physical sheath. A
sheath conceals its content – that is the meaning of the
metaphor. If you put a knife inside the sheath, you do not see
the blade, you see only the sheath. You do not even know

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whether the blade is there or not, because you cannot see it.
That is the meaning of the metaphor of the sheath. Similarly,
you look at yourself and imagine yourself to be somebody.
You think 'I am so-and-so.' You are wrong. 'What? My
understanding of myself is wrong?' Yes, wrong. 'How do you
know it?' Tell me, are you happy or unhappy? 'Of course I‟m
unhappy.' Okay, then your understanding of yourself is
wrong. That is enough of a test.
If you understand yourself correctly, there is no occasion
for you to be unhappy and insecure. If you say, 'I am unhappy
and insecure,' it means that your 'I am' sense is all messed up
and therefore you do not know yourself. As ancient
philosopher said, 'Know thyself, and be liberated!' We must
have an open mind and acknowledge that we do not know.
We have to suspend all these ideas that we have about
knowing. Just give them up and become free of them, then
something can be learned. Otherwise one cannot learn.
Body is the first sheath
I take myself to be the physical body. I say I am a man
weighing seventy-five kilograms. But the body is not your
real self, and therefore the physical body is the first kośa,
sheath. We call it a kośa because as long as there is the sense
of identity with the body, truth of the Self remains concealed
and frustration is inevitable. You may have wealth, pleasures,
you may be even worshipping God with a variety of rituals –
still you remain frustrated. Now what else can you do? You
have wealth, pleasure, power, and God. You have secured all
the four and yet remain frustrated. So you have to know

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yourself as entirely different and distinct from the body,
unrelated to the body.
It is like living in a home. You know that you are not the
home. You are different from the home, because the home is
made of bricks and cement. Are you made of bricks and
cement? No. Similarly, you are not the body. Not only are
you not the body, you are entirely different from the body.
The body is insentient, and you are sentient. Deho na jānāti ,
the body does not know. This verse comes later.
The body does not know, whereas knowing is your bread
and butter, knowing is what you are. When you realize that
you are entirely different from the body, you will find respite
from the mix or toxicity of fear and desire, because desire and
fear can never be separated from 'I am the body' idea. Merely
fulfilling a few desires whenever it is workable, or merely
assuaging fears, will not remove the sense of a general
dissatisfaction and insecurity from one‟s own life. It cannot
be removed unless you look at this 'I am the body' idea,
address it, and get rid of it. Until then, there is no escape from
the unhappiness and insecurity that has become an integral
part of one‟s existence.
All assertions are false
One has to die to the body to become awake to the truth. In
this sense the body becomes a kośa, sheath. Self-knowledge is
not so much about Atman as it is about what Atman is not. It
is a negative understanding, which is attainable and also final
and conclusive because all other assertions are false. Any
assertion you make is false: 'I am a father' – false; 'I own

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riches' – false; 'I am a Californian' – false. But if you have
some negative understanding, then you are on the right path.
If you say your children are God‟s children and see that 'I am
called the father, but it does not matter, in real sense that I am
not one,' you are blessed and are already on the path of truth.
Similarly, 'this is a pot' – false; 'this is clay' – even that is
false. With reference to pot, we say the clay is true, but it is
not that clay is THE truth. Brahman is THE truth.
Therefore you see that knowledge in the form of negative
understanding is conclusive and final. There is nothing more
to add to that. If you say, „I do not own anything in this
world,' that is final. You cannot improve upon it or add
anything to it.
Prāṇa – the second sheath
The next is prāṇa, vital force. Breath – inhalation and
exhalation – is a very powerful expression of prāṇa. The
ability to walk is also prāṇa. Even prāṇa I am not because I
am the one directing the prāṇa. There is an intelligence
behind all movement of prāṇa. Consider the heart beat. The
heart is physical, the heart-beat is prāṇa, and there is an
intelligence behind that heart-beat.
In practice, identifying with hunger and thirst is the direct
consequence of identification with prāṇa. I am very much
aware of hunger, but 'I am hungry' is the identification. Any
identification leads to obsession. A person who believes that
he should never be hungry would become sick. It has been
proven that remaining hungry for some time is good for
physical and mental health. But when we identify ourselves

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with hunger, we get obsessed with eating, and become slaves
to food. When we do not get the proper food now and then,
we are worked up. This is identification with prāṇa. These
sheaths are all obsessions.
Self-identification is a sheath, but it does not remain as
some innocuous identification. It develops into an obsession
and becomes a sheath that covers up the reality. When there is
thirst, one drinks water, and when there is hunger, one eats
food. That 'one' is not Atman; it is the body-identified ego. As
there is the identification with hunger, eating becomes an
obsession that leads to enjoyment. Obviously this leads to all
kinds of problems. Ill health, stomach problems, etc. are
symptoms of the same disease, namely identification with
prāṇa. The body‟s reaction under the influence of prāṇa is
hunger and thirst; Atman has nothing to do with it. Muṇḍaka
Upaniṣad (2-1-2) points out that Atman is aprāṇa, not prāṇa.
Manas – the third sheath
Now we come to the mind. You are not your mind; in fact
it is not even your mind, it is just the mind. One says, 'My
mind is out of my control; I am unable to hold it; I do not
know what my next thought is going to be; this thought binds
me, etc.' This obviously shows that you are different from the
mind. If you were the mind, you would not be bothered by the
mind, just as the scorpion is not hurt by its own poison. I am
what I am; whatever may be the mind. That is fine and natural
and therefore it should not cause me any suffering.

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Suffering is caused by identification
What is natural to you does not make you suffer. It is the
unnatural which makes you suffer. Suffering is because of the
identification with the body and mind. Non-identification
with the body is possible. You can manage it with some
alertness through śravaṇa, manana, and nididhyāsana, but it is
all the more difficult when it comes to the mind. There is a
way of doing it, however. You have to persevere and remind
yourself that 'I am beyond the concerns of the body and the
mind' and remind yourself of your true nature as pure
awareful being.
If you do not identify with the body, it remains in its place
without bothering you. When it is in pain it will draw your
attention, so you give it some medicine or some food and it
will not disturb you anymore. It is identification and the
consequent obsession with the body that has to be overcome,
not the body per se. Similarly, there is an obsession with the
mind, meaning that if the mind is disturbed or unhappy, there
is a feeling that we have to get rid of that unhappiness
immediately.
Do not try to escape from unhappiness; just watch it
When you are unhappy, do not seek to escape from that
unhappiness. You may want to go and share your sorrow with
somebody, for example. They say that 'a sorrow shared is a
sorrow halved,' which is true to some extent. If you want to
do that, you can, and sorrow may come down also, but then
you may become sorrowful again. The point is that you can
never solve the problem that way, so do not try to escape

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from sorrow. You should share the sorrow with someone may
be a good advice. What I am saying is something entirely
different from that.
Do not try to resolve the sorrow by such worldly means or
by religious means either. People take to religion when they
are sorrowful, which is an attempt to escape. They are
escaping from the sorrow into religion. Do not do that;
instead, just watch your sorrow. When you do this, it will
undergo a mutation. It will cease to be a sorrow. I have said
this about fear, and now I am saying this about sorrow.
When you watch your sorrow, you are already going
beyond the concerns of the body-mind. When you are trying
to escape from the sorrow and assuming that 'somebody else
will resolve my sorrow' or 'God will resolve my sorrow,' they
may resolve it for the time being, but you have not solved the
problem fundamentally. A poet once said, 'sukh to āti hai jāti
hai, dukh to hamāra sāthi hai,‟1 and he is right. So rise above
the concerns of the body and mind because it is the mind that
may get insulted, say, and suffers because of the insult. I
remain at a higher level, watching the mind.
The point is that the mind is a sheath only if you identify
with it and become one with it. Suppose the mind wants
something, so you have to go beyond the mind. When you ask
the question, 'What am I upto?,' you are already beyond the
mind. Watch the mind – it establishes you in a dimension
higher than the mind. When you do not do that, the mind‟s

1
Happiness comes and goes, but sorrow is our constant companion.
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sorrow is your sorrow. Therefore, go beyond the mind and
watch it because it is a sheath.
Buddhi - the fourth sheath
Thought comes from the buddhi, intellect, and thought
arises from a vāsanā, impression, in the buddhi. Without an
impression, there will be no thought. For example, first
someone, generally mother or father created the impression
'flower' in the child‟s mind, only then can the child cognize a
flower.
Suppose you are looking at a flower: can you do so
without naming it? It is possible: just look at it without
putting a label to it. When you look at it that way, you are
really looking at it. Otherwise you look at the thing through
the conglomerate of the past impressions. These impressions
constitute a sheath. Thus we fail to see what really is. People
say „rose,‟ but „rose‟ is just a label. It does not say 'I am a
rose; we say it is a rose. We say „drawing room.‟ 'Drawing
room' is a label that we put to an enclosed space.
The label, coming from the mental impression is a
superimposition on what is. The label, or the name, covers the
glory of what is, and now you are stuck with a label. This
label, name, is in the form of a thought, which then becomes
speech. The śruti (Chandogyopanishat, 6-1-4) says:
vācārambhaṇam, beginning with, or originating from, speech.
This label is coming from the software that is already in the
intellect. The Bhagavatham (11-26-23) says:
adṛṣṭādaśrutādbhāvānna bhāva upajāyat e, a thought does not
arise about a thing which was never seen or never heard of.

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These labels are given a lofty name „knowledge.‟ This
knowledge is the intellect and from there all thoughts arise.
This is bauddhika jñāna, intellectual knowledge, because the
intellect is the receptacle of that knowledge.
Knowledge versus skill
When we say satyaṁ jñānamanantaṁ brahma
(Taittiriyopanishat, 2-1), however, jñāna, knowledge, in this
context cannot be put in the same category. That is not the
knowledge coming from family, society or even colleges and
universities. For example, even if one gets an M.A. in
Vedanta, one may not have that knowledge that is Atman.
One may learn and speak all the words about Atman without
ever knowing what Atman is.
The intellect is filled with many things except the
knowledge of the Self. This is a fact of life and we have to
acknowledge it, otherwise we cannot move forward. One
should not remain stuck at the level of the intellect. If you say
that the intellect will give Self-knowledge, why is there a fifth
kośa and then something beyond the fifth kośa? You still have
to cross one more kośa and go beyond that also.
If we reserve the word „knowledge‟ for Self-knowledge,
what the intellect contains can be called by another word; say
skill or expertise. What a physician has in his intellect is an
expertise of a particular type. An engineer has the skill of a
different type and a teacher has the skill of another type. That
skill helps to make a living, but does not help one to know the
truth of the Self. Making a living is important, but we want to
know the truth. Skill does not help you there; therefore, it

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does not matter if you are a doctor or an engineer or a night
watchman or rickshaw puller.
Sometimes skill can be mistaken for knowledge of the
truth. 'I am a doctor, I am an engineer, I am a professor, I am
a Vedanta teacher' – all of this produces a false sense of self
when you really become identified with a skill. For example,
some people start with medicine and end up with literature,
which means only that they have changed their skill. Atman
the essence of the individual remains the same ever, only the
skills change. That is the intellect, vijñānamaya-kośa, a
sheath. Therefore, one should not identify with a skill. A skill
is something one acquires and loses, whereas Self is not
something you acquire. You have to discover it, and you are
not going to lose it either.
The fifth sheath ānandamaya
Then there is bhoga, enjoyment. Some people think the
body is simply meant for bhoga: breathing in and out, and all
kinds of activities, are just for bhoga. Enter into a train for
bhoga, come out of the train for bhoga; enter into marriage for
bhoga, come out of marriage for bhoga – everything for
bhoga. We see the whole life is aimed at bhoga. When the
bhoga pursuit in the world becomes very painful, we enter
into religion, hoping that religion will help us to pursue even
more bhoga. There are even mantras that are supposed to
facilitate bhoga.
When we come to Vedanta, we realize that bhoga is
bondage, a sheath. Bhoga is a well entrenched vāsanā in the
human being. Worldly people look at the body for bhoga,

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prāṇa for bhoga, manas for bhoga, and intellect also for
bhoga. Seeking bhoga precipitates an egoistic entity and we
identify with it. We have to examine that bhoga-seeking
entity. It is a sheath, a very powerful and a painful sheath. We
have to recognize it as a false entity covering up the truth.
Happiness cannot become happy
You do not need bhoga. You do not need to become happy
because you are the very Happiness. Happiness cannot
become happy, just as sugar cannot become sweet or salt
cannot become salty. As long as you want to become happy,
you are in trouble and you will be frustrated. Seeking to
become happy is a sheath which employs skills, relations, and
everything for that seeking.
This sheath is called ānanda-maya, another word for
bhoga. Ānanda-maya is not ānanda, bliss; it is the bhoga
sheath and you are not that. You have mistakenly identified
with what you are not, so you have to rise above that.
Vairāgya, dispassion, is a means to accomplish this. In
vairāgya you call the bluff of this bhoga-seeking entity. You
ask, 'Why should I seek bhoga – for happiness? No. I am
Happiness myself.' Then you rise above that.
The five kośas together make up the body
These are the five kośas. All the five kośas together are
called deha here. This pañca-kośātmaka-deha is bhoga, skill,
sukha-duḥkha, hunger and thirst, and the physical body.
Identification with this at every level is in place and you are
no more than a body-mind identified entity. As long as the
body-mind identification persists, you see the world as
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different from you and consisting of many body-minds. Then
you need a creator, another body-mind to create all these
body-minds. This is how you have created a picture of the
world out of your identification with the body-mind.
Therefore, the question is: without these five sheaths, without
this body-mind identification, can there be an appearance of a
world? This is a rhetorical question: of course, the answer is
no. There can be no world.
The world is relative to the body-mind
What you call the world is relative to the body-mind. The
body-mind itself is an assembly of five elements. The
physical body is made up of the five gross elements – pṛthivī,
āpaḥ, agni, vāyu, and ākāśa. Then the indriyas, senses, are
manifestations of the subtle elements – hearing of ākāsa,
touch of vāyu, eyesight of agni, taste of āpaḥ, and smell of
pṛthivī. Then the mind is the combination of all the five subtle
elements. Thus the body is nothing but a conglomerate of all
elements, both subtle and gross.
These elements become kośas because of identification.
Therefore, Sri Śaṅkarācārya says (Taittiriya, 2-2) avidyā-kṛta-
pañca-kośa-apanayana is needed. Apanayana means to
eliminate or set aside cognitively correcting the identification
or misapprehension.
To start with, the physical body is taken as Atman. You
understand that it is not Atman – that is the first apanayana,
elimination. Seeing clearly that I am not the physical body
eliminates the one layer of ignorance. Then you proceed in
the same manner with each layer: prāṇa, manas, vijñāna, and

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bhoktṛtva, seeking bhoga. All these are imagined to be
Atman, so you see that you are mistaken and that they are all
relative. You see yourself as bhoktā, the enjoyer, and
therefore the world is bhogya, the enjoyed.
The world is not bhogya unless there is a bhoktā. You
cannot have enjoyment without the enjoyer. Unless you are a
kartā, doer, there can be no kārya, action done. Similarly,
without a cognizer there can be no cognized, so the world is
relative. Unless the body-mind is in place, you cannot have a
consciousness that is associated with the body-mind. And
once the consciousness of the world is in place, you have a
world. The point is that the world is not intrinsically real as
you assume it to be.
Twofold versus threefold model of reality
Here we give certain illustrations, such as śukti-rajata, the
oyster/conch shell-silver. A greedy person walked by the
seashore and suddenly saw a shell; he instantly mistook it for
silver. Now, how many things are there? When he saw the
silver, there was only one thing, and even when he found the
truth, there was only one thing. Therefore, there is only one
thing, silver or the shell. Ignorance made him see silver in the
shell. Therefore, in a way, there are two things, silver and
shell. After gaining knowledge, he understood that, of these
two things, one is real and the other unreal: silver is unreal
and shell is real. That is the example.
In this example, shell and silver are both objects. What
appeared is prātibhāsika, the unreal silver, and the real shell is
pāramārthika,. There is no third category. What is sometimes

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called vyāvahārika, empirical, is indeed part and parcel of the
prātibhāsika. Same is the case with the rope-snake illustration.
Is the clay-pot example different? This Swami does not think
so. In this example also, there are only two things: pot, which
is prātibhāsika and clay, which is pāramārthika. The pot is
vācarambhaṇam, vācā ārabhyate , or even vācaḥ ārabhyate,
originating with speech, or from speech. This means that the
appearance (pot) is linguistic and observational but not
existential.
When we talk of the three states of the mind – jāgrat,
waking, svapna, dream, and suṣupti, deep sleep – then we
bring in the idea of vyāvahārika. The dream world is
prātibhāsika, the waking world is vyāvahārika, and the
Brahman who is the origin of the waking world is
pāramārthika. This is sṛṣṭi-dṛṣṭi vāda. In dṛṣṭi-sṛṣṭi vāda,
vyāvahārika gets included in prātibhāsika. You can always
complicate things, but basically a thing is either real or unreal.
But in understanding reality, there are only two things: real
and unreal. You see the silver – is it real or unreal? The
answer is very simple: it is unreal.
Therefore you have Brahman as well as the jagat before
you, just like you have a rope and a serpent. In these two,
what is real and what is unreal? The issue is very clear unless
you want to give some special status to jagat for some
particular reason. There could be reasons that are valid and
legitimate, but I am not dealing with that situation here. In the
context of prātibhāsika, unreal, vis-a-vis pāramārthika, real,
one thing remains as real and the other gets eliminated as

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unreal. In the rope-snake example, the rope remains as real
and the snake is seen as unreal.
Similarly, the body-mind consciousness and the jagat
appear and disappear together. Then only one thing remains,
which is the dṛk-jñāna, dṛk-svarūpa, the essential nature of the
seer, which is ātmā-caitanya, Self-Awareness. Viewed
through the prism of the body-mind, Brahman appears as the
jagat. What you call jagat is therefore relative to the body-
mind consciousness, or the knower.
The message of this verse is that what happens to the body
and the mind is not under your control. If you understand this
well, you will become free from the concerns of the body-
mind. I am putting an emphasis on this aspect because that
gives you freedom. There are certainly concerns of the body,
but what happens to the body is not in your control. The
entire physiology follows the laws of nature; you have no say
in the matter.
It is the same with the mind. You say 'my mind,' but it is
never your mind. It is a mind and it has its own dynamics.
The mind also follows the laws of the nature. Therefore the
point is that what happens to the body and mind may not be
within your power. The body may become sick and then you
cannot have a cheerful mind. You may remain courageous but
still you cannot be happy and cheerful. But you can always
put an end to imagining yourself to be the body and the mind.
Doing that is called kośa-apanayana, i.e. transcending the
sheaths of the body and mind.

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 The way to accomplish this is through śravan ̣a, manana,
and nididhyāsana. Conduct yourself as if you are not the
body, just try it. Transport yourself into the higher realm in
which you are aware of the body-mind without any
identification. As long as there is food, there will be the body
and mind. Chāndogya Upaniṣad (6-6-5) points out that
annamayaṁ hi somya manaḥ, the mind is indeed the product
of food. When food is given up for whatever reason, the body
dies and the mind dissolves.
As long as you think that there is a body with a mind in it,
and Atman is in the body-mind, something like a pot with
some oil in it and a diamond inside the oil, so long you will
remain ignorant of the nature of Atman. Because now the
body-mind with Atman inside is in the world. So there is the
world and then this Atman will go from here to there and
from there to somewhere else. As long as you think along
these lines, you will not know Atman.
The body is a flow, flow of sensations. This flow is
integrated and labeled in the mind as cognition. Therefore, the
body is an idea in the mind. There are all kinds of ideas in the
mind, and the body is one more idea. That is why there is the
psychological phenomenon of phantom limbs. Someone loses
a limb, but the mind still perceives it as being there. The mind
itself is a movement in consciousness. The waking
consciousness originates from the Supreme Reality, Atman.
Therefore you are not in the body, the body is in you. You are
also not in the mind, the mind is in you. This is one thing you
have to contemplate. This discussion continues further in the
next verse.
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 Verse 8

शब्दािदरूपिं िुिनिं समस्तिं शब्दािदसत्तेचियिृित्तिास्या ।

सत्तेचियाणािं मनसो िशे स्यान्मनोमयिं तद्भिु निं िदामाः ।। 8
śabdādirūpaṁ bhuvanaṁ samastaṁ
śabdādisattendriyavṛttibhāsyā,
sattendriyāṇāṁ manaso vaśe syān-
manomayaṁ tadbhuvanaṁ vadāmaḥ. 8
samastam – entire; bhuvanam – world; śabda-ādi-rūpam –
having the form of sound, etc.; śabda-ādi-satta - the existence
of sound, etc.; indriya-vṛtti-bhāsyā – is illuminated by the
functions of the sense organs; sattā – existence; indriyāṇām -
of the sense organs; manasaḥ – of the mind; vaśe – in the
control; syāt – is; tat – therefore; bhuvanam – the world;
mano-mayam – modification of the mind; vadāmaḥ – we
declare.
The entire world is in the form of sound, form etc.
That the sound, form etc. exist is illuminated by the
operation of the sense organs. The existence of the
sense organs is in the control of the mind. Therefore, we
declare that the world is a modification of the mind.
Body-mind and world are a dipole
Vadāmaḥ, Maharshi declares emphatically that the world
is mano-maya, purely a conception of the mind. In fact, what
you call the world is nothing more than the idea of the world.
Ramana Maharshi used to ask, 'When do you have the world?
Only when the mind arises. In the absence of the mind, there

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is no world.' When your mind is perfectly still, the waking
state is no more, which in other words means the world is no
more. It is like the electro-magnet. When the electricity is
switched off, the South Pole is gone and North Pole is also
gone. Similarly, when the mind becomes perfectly still, there
is no body-mind anymore and therefore there is no world. The
body-mind and the world put together as a dipole constitute
what is called waking consciousness.
All cognition is recognition
This statement that the world is but the conception of the
mind has enormous implications. The two means of knowing
things, viz. the perception and the inference, are well known.
Let me add one more, imagination. These three – perception,
inference, and imagination – are all the movement of the
mind. Then I will add illusion, anticipation, and expectation,
which are also the movements of the mind. These are all
similar because their single source is nothing but memory.
You perceive a pot because you recollect a pot, and
therefore all cognitions are but recognitions. When you
cognize a pot you are recognizing a pot because if there is no
pot idea in the mind, there would be no cognition of pot. And
when you infer, it is also coming from memory too. I infer
fire because there is the idea of fire in the memory. If there
were no idea of fire in the memory, there would never be the
inference of the fire. You imagine something, like a
mountain. To do that, there is no need to stand before a
mountain because it comes from the memory.

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 Thought is a response of the memory to an external
stimulus. When you cognize a pot, it is the pot-thought that
cognizes the pot, and the origin of this pot-thought is
memory. The external object only provides the stimulus for
optical sensation. Therefore, we never know what is outside;
it is unknown and unknowable. It is Brahman, a name given
to the nameless. There are hardly any borderlines between
perception, inference, imagination, anticipation, and
expectation. For example: I expect rain. This means that there
is the idea of rain. Is it coming from the future time or is it
coming from the past memory? They are all the same; they
just merge into each other. Therefore, when you say, 'I
cognize a pot,' a philosopher would say that you are
imagining. You say, 'I am expecting my son,' and I say you
are in your imaginary world.
Is there anything outside?
Now only one question remains: is there something outside
or not? The śūnya-vādī, nihilist, says that there is nothing
outside. But he is there to assert that the truth is non-
existence. The brahma-vādī says that all is Brahman alone,
one without a second. These two are like the extremes of a
pendulum swing and therefore look very much alike.
In any case, the world that you perceive is a very small
world, entirely based on your memory. It is entirely a private
world, very much like a dream, a waking dream. Therefore,
you may take the world as a dream and be done with it. The
world does not come and tell you that 'you are a part of me.' It
is you who project the totality, and then project yourself as a
part of it. This is the dṛṣṭi-sṛṣṭi-vāda.
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Reducing things to their essence
To understand what is meant by the term bhuvanaṁ
samastam, we resort to the philosophical principle of
'reductionism,' in which the whole is reduced to its
fundamental principles. It is like studying a language. We do
not memorize the lexicon. We reduce the language to its
fundamental structures such as nouns, pronouns, adjectives,
adverbs, verbs, etc. In chemistry, we reduce the hundred odd
elements to eight groups and then study those groups.
The entire universe is reduced to five elements
What is this entire universe? The entire universe is reduced
to the five elements of earth, waters, fire, air, and space. This
is the Indian philosophers‟ model. Why five? As stated
earlier, there is no world independent of the subject, which is
the body-mind. The world is relative to the mind, and the
mind has a five-fold cognition. Therefore the perception of
the world is five-fold: it is what we hear, touch, see, taste, and
smell. Everything is included in this, nothing is left out. There
are five sense organs corresponding to the five sensations –
that is the world. There is no sixth sense, except in
Hollywood!
How do you know the existence of sound? Because it is
illuminated by the sensation generated by the faculty of
hearing. When there is a vibration, it reaches the eardrum,
which creates electro-chemical signals resulting in auditory
sensations. Those sensations illuminate the sound. There can
be no sound without the knowledge of the sound.

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 Thus the five sense objects are reduced to five kinds of
sensations. Therefore, we never perceive the matter or the
world. We never touch the table because as the hand reaches a
certain point near the table, Van der Waals forces1 kick in and
the sensation occurs. As the hand is going near the table, the
atoms start repelling the hand with tensile force. That
repulsion is experienced by the nerve endings in the form of a
stream of sensations. If the hand is numb, we do not feel it.
This means that we never cognize or perceive the table, we
perceive only our own sensation of touch.
If your mind is engrossed elsewhere, you will not hear the
sound or see the form or pick up the scent. The mind must be
aligned with the sense organ, and only then does perception
occur. Therefore the sensation is validated by the cognizing
mind. To perceive anything, the mind must convert the
sensation into an idea. If you do not hear anything, how can
you say that you can hear? You cannot say there is hearing
unless you hear the sound. Therefore 'is-ness' of these
sensations is indeed established by the mind.
The world is in the mind
Why are we unable to appreciate this basic truth? We are
confused because we believe that we are in the world, when
in fact the world is in us. When you are looking at a conch
shell and see silver, was silver there a moment before? No. At
that moment there is silver, before that moment there was no

1
Van der Waals forces are relatively weak electric forces that attract
neutral molecules to one another in gases, in liquefied and solidified
gases, and in almost all organic liquids and solids (Encyclopedia
Brittanica).
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silver. Where is the silver? The locus of the silver is not the
shell, it is your thought. What in fact is in the thought is
assumed to be present in the shell. The object of the thought
is assumed to be present in the locus of the shell. Therefore,
what you think is outside is in fact inside your mind. The
silver is inside his mind because the person is greedy, and it
appears outside. That is māyā.
When the world is in you, you imagine that you are in the
world; such an imagination comes in the way of
understanding. If you say, 'I am in the world,' I can correct it.
But if you strongly believe that you were born at a certain
place and at a certain time, I cannot correct that. If you
believe you were born in the world and have been living in
the world for sixty or seventy years, I come and say 'you are
not in the world, the world is in you,' I may sound ridiculous.
Also, you have all the documents to prove that you have come
into this world and the world was there even before you came
in and it will be there after you leave, and so on. And you
have all the models of sañcita-karma etc. well organized and
fixed. If I then come and say, 'There is no world outside of
you,' just as there is no silver outside of you, you find it
difficult to understand and accept.
As long as you imagine that you are born to particular
parents and in a particular caste, or creed, or race, or religion,
you will never understand the truth of the Self. This is the
„original sin,‟ namely the notion that 'I am born into the
world.' You give reality to the picture on the screen, but
having done so, you are unwilling to accept the entire picture.
You are okay with certain parts of the picture, but not with
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the other parts, so you want to change them. You cannot
change the world, and you need not change it. You have to
begin the change with yourself because the picture on the
screen is not real as you imagine.
Therefore, begin with yourself. Taking appearance for
reality is the cause of all calamities in life. You are the all-
pervading, infinite awareness. The waking consciousness
happens due to contact of Awareness Absolute with the body-
mind, and in that waking consciousness the world appears.
The waking consciousness and the world appear and
disappear together. You are the Atman, the Awareness
Absolute.
Verse 9

चधया सहोदे ित चधयाऽ स्तमेित लो स्ततो धीप्रिििास्य एषाः ।

धीलो जन्मक्षयधाम पूणं सद्वस्तु जन्मक्षयशून्यमे म् ।। 9
dhiyā sahodeti dhiyā‟stameti
lokastato dhīpravibhāsya eṣaḥ,
dhīlokajanmakṣayadhāma pūrṇaṁ
sadvastu janmakṣayaśūnyamekam. 9
eṣaḥ – this; lokaḥ – world; dhiyā saha - together with the
mind; udeti – rises; dhiyā – together with the mind; astam eti
– sets; tataḥ – therefore; dhī-pravibhāsyaḥ – illumined very
well by the mind; dhī-loka-janma-kṣaya-dhāma – source of
the birth and decay of the mind and the world (or mind-born
world); pūrṇam – fullness; sad-vastu – the reality of the
Being; janma-kṣaya-śūnyam – free of birth and decay; ekam –
one.
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 This world rises and sets together with the mind;
thus this world is illumined by the mind. The reality of
the Being is the abode of the birth and decay of the
mind and the (mind-born) world. It is the fullness free
from birth and decay, and It is one.
The world arises with the mind
This world pops up in your awareness. In sleep it is not
there. You cannot say, „It is there because I was sleeping in
my room.‟ In sleep there is no „my,‟ there is no „room,‟ and
there is no „sleeping.‟ This world is not there in sleep, but
then it suddenly pops up. You may think that you have
popped into the world, but in fact it is the world that has
popped up in your awareness.
As long as you think that there is a world independent of
you, and you come into this world on a given date and will go
out of this world on another date, you will never come to
know the truth of the Self. You are caught in the web of birth
and death because that is how you have blessed yourself.
Within life there is sukha-duḥkha, an inexorable cycle of
pleasure and pain; you can perhaps have satisfaction that „I
have done puṇya, so I will have some pleasure,‟ and you will
have the satisfaction of transmigration of the soul. You can
hold onto that, but you will never come to know the truth.
You will stay put in the cycle of saṁsāra.
Truth requires a different vision
Arriving at the truth requires looking at things differently.
What is this different vision? When I wake up, the world
comes in, and when I go to sleep, it resolves into myself. This
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is the right way of looking at the truth. Now the world cannot
plague you anymore because you have a command over that
world. Otherwise you remain a slave to the world.
How does the world pop up when we wake up? The
Maharshi says, dhiyā saha udeti. The world arises along with
the mind. The mind was sleeping and now it is awake. It
blossoms like a bud that suddenly opens. Along with the
mind, the world wakes up. It is like when we used to go to the
movies in the childhood: we arrive early at the theatre and sit
there, eager to see the movie. But there is nothing there, only
the screen. Suddenly the screen comes to life, but it is just a
brilliant white light at first. Then the projector operator inserts
the film and now you have the movie. This is exactly what
happens every morning when you wake up: the light, which is
the light of Atman, the Awareness Absolute, shines, but there
is still no world because the film is not yet inserted. The
screen is lit, but without the film. Then the film, which is the
mind, gets inserted and you think, „I am in the room on my
bed.‟ So you identify with the body already. Then the film
continues, „Oh, it is morning.‟ Then you smell the coffee
already brewing there because the film (mind) is moving.
„Oh, this is my house, this is my wife and these are my
children.‟ And so it goes on: the movie scenes are going on;
the mind and world are unfolding.
The world sets with the mind
This unfolding process goes on and on so much that you
get tired of this world. When the mind is tired and can no
longer project the world, it goes into sleep. Then the world
that has arisen with the mind, now sets along with the mind.
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This is the process that happens every day. Therefore we
conclude that this world is dhī-pravibhāsya, illumined by the
mind. This world is a series of scenes entirely thrown up by
the mind.
The world is subjective, not objective
Everyone lives in a world and thinks that it is an objective
world, meaning that the world is there independent of the
person. The world is there, true, but it is subjective, not
objective. As a philosopher once said, every description of the
world has a signature to it. Suppose you ask me to describe
the world. You will be perplexed by the time I finish my
description, because the description would be entirely
subjective, i.e. from my point of view. The monks have their
own peculiar world. When somebody wants to take to
sannyāsa, I tell him, „You are rushing into a very peculiar
world. I am not sure whether you can fit into it.‟ Because it is
not the same world in which you are or somebody else lives.
Everybody lives in his or her own world – no two worlds
are the same. For example, the man has one idea of the family
and the woman a totally different idea. They put these two
ideas side-by-side and lead family life. There are areas in
which the ideas coincide, but the two world views are not the
same. No two world views are same. Also, no two world
views are equally good or equally bad; they change and they
differ. Even for the same person, the world view changes,
from time to time.

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The royal barber and his gold
There is a story about this. Once upon a time there was a
barber who served the king. Such a barber has a special status
and serves only the king; he does not entertain other
customers. They say that the king bows his head to only one
person, and that is the barber! So the king was sitting in the
chair and the barber was trimming his beard and cutting his
hair. The king wanted to know what was going on in his
kingdom, so he asked the barber, „How are the things in the
world?‟ The barber replied, „Maharaj, things are going great!
There are honest people everywhere and everyone has gold
corresponding to the size of an egg.‟ The king was happy to
hear this because it meant that in his kingdom everybody was
doing well. The economy was so good that everybody could
purchase an amount of gold equal to the size of an egg.
In fact, the reason the barber said this was because he
always carried a wooden chest with him, in which he kept his
instruments. He also had some gold he had accumulated,
which was the size of an egg, and he kept that gold also in the
chest. So this was his world, a very interesting world. Then
one day, somebody noticed this gold in his chest while he was
opening and closing it, and that person stole the gold. The
barber‟s heart was broken! Then the king‟s messenger came
and said, „The king wants you to come tomorrow morning at
seven.‟ He cannot say no, even though he did not have any
enthusiasm to go now. So he was despondent and went
reluctantly with his tool kit and was shaving the king‟s beard.
When the king repeated his usual question, „How is the
world?,‟ the barber replied, „What shall I say, Maharaj? The
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people are not happy at all. There are thieves everywhere and
nobody has got any gold whatsoever!‟ So that is how his
world now, suddenly it has changed. Why? Because his
mindset has changed, due to loss of gold.
The world is your cognition of the world
The belief that some of the world is subjective, but some
could be objective, is called dvaita, duality. The subjective
aspect is already made clear, but what is called objective is
also from the mind alone. When you look at your mind now,
you see that the mind is constantly cognizing things. When it
is cognizing one thing, all other cognitions are in the
background. Therefore cognitions are of two kinds: conscious
and unconscious. Unconscious does not mean that you are in
an unconscious state; it means that there is a cognition of
which you are only vaguely conscious. For example, when
you are particularly conscious of the clock on the wall, you
are only vaguely conscious of the people, the hall, the roof,
lamps, book, etc. around.
Therefore your world is made up of your particular
cognitions and your vague cognitions. Consciousness here
refers to the flow of thoughts, whereas Atman is the
Awareness Absolute. The background cognitions are space,
time, the elements, this town, this country, and so on, whereas
the focused or particular cognitions are such as „my house,
my wife, my children, etc.‟ These are all within your
cognition. Some may be common with others, but some are
part and parcel of your cognition alone. There are no others
independent of you; there are others only in your cognition.

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Therefore you should not give in to the weakness of thinking
that some of it is objective and some of it is subjective.
The point is that there is no world other than your
conception of the world. This is dṛṣṭi-sṛṣṭi vāda.1 In fact,
Ramana Maharshi said, „The world is another name of the
mind.‟ The mind and the world are related to each other. They
appear together and disappear together, so they are not the
truth. The truth is that from which they come from and
resolve together into the same.
Everything shines in the consciousness. When we say that
the movie is illuminated by the light of the projector, it means
that there is only one reality, namely the light. Similarly,
everything shines in the waking consciousness that is put in
place by the contact of the mind with Atman, the Awareness
Absolute. The example here is sunlight: when sunlight comes
in contact with the atmosphere, it becomes daylight. Daylight
is different from sunlight because daylight begins and ends,
whereas sunlight neither begins nor ends. Daylight may
become dim by the clouds, but sunlight is always the same,
nothing can do anything to it. Sunlight is timeless, but
daylight is timebound. The difference between waking
consciousness and Atman, the Awareness Absolute, is similar
to the difference between day-light and sunlight.
The world comes to light in waking consciousness. You
think that the world is located outside, but that space is in
you. Space is a mental category and time is also a mental
category. That being so, what is outside? In fact, the idea of

1
See discussion to verse 7
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„outside‟ itself is in consciousness. There is no „outside‟
outside of the consciousness. Outside and inside both are
inside consciousness alone. What is the world after all? It is a
collection of memories. Mental states succeed one another,
and the successive mental states obliterate the preceding
mental states. I see something I like and I am happy. Then I
see something else which I do not like, and I become
unhappy. One mental state obliterates the previous mental
state and by the end of the day, the mind is tired and done
with and so you go to sleep to put an end to all mental states.
Then the whole thing starts again the next morning.
The world is a dream
There is one thing that you need to realize, and it is very
simple. Forget about everything else; it can wait. You need to
realize one thing: namely, you are dreaming a dream called
the world. The world is the name given to the dream that we
are dreaming. The dream is not the problem, the problem is
that you like some part of the dream and you dislike the other
part. So just maintain equanimity – do not be attached to
certain things of the dream and dislike certain other things.
Either love all of the dream or just ignore all of it. Either way,
you are fine. What to do about the dream? There is only one
thing to do about the dream: see the dream as a dream. Then
you have done all that needs to be done about the dream. That
is the message of the verse.
Finding the source of the world
You need not do anything about the world, which is
nothing but your dream. What you have to do is to find out

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where this waking consciousness has originated from, or the
abode of the waking consciousness, the source of
illumination. It is the self-effulgent Atman. When you watch
a movie, you can see a pencil of light coming from the
projector on to the screen. Therefore, we can trace the light on
the screen back to its source, the projector. Similarly, to find
out the origin of this world, we need to look back to the
source of consciousness. The waking consciousness is the
light. But like daylight, it is a reflected light, not the original
light.
The original source of light is pūrṇa, the fullness, because
the space-time itself is illumined by It. When you look at the
scenes on a movie screen, they are all limited in space and
time. There is a space in which the scenes appear and there is
a time scale in the movie. When you are looking at the screen,
you do not just look at the objects, you look at objects against
the background of space-time. There is an ocean and a
helicopter is flying, so space is there. And because there is the
movement of the helicopter due to flying, there is time. Any
movement is time. Therefore the space-time framework is
there, and you are watching the scenes in that framework.
This framework is also provided by the light alone because
the screen itself does not provide anything.
The world is a show on the canvas of space-time
Similarly, the mind has space and time. The light of
awareness reflects in the mind, and in the world, which are all
the scenes of the mind, and have inherent limitation of space
and time. The moment you say „a pot,‟ it means this shape,
here, at this time; so space and time are involved. That is why
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Einstein said that the world is a show on the canvas of space-
time. What Ramana Maharshi said, what Einstein said, and
what Śaṅkara said is all one and the same. The contexts may
be different, but the approach is the same.
The source is spaceless and timeless Awareful Being
The source is spaceless: space is in dhī-loka, waking
consciousness, which is not in the source. Time is also in dhī-
loka, not in the source. And the variety or multiplicity is in
dhī-loka, also not in the source. Therefore the source is called
pūrṇa, that alone is. And that is the truth because the truth is
what is; that is the vastu.
What kind of vastu is it? It is sad-vastu – the Being
Absolute, the primordial, original Awareful Being. It is not
insentient. It is the Awareful Being and it is beginningless.
Everything begins in it and everything ends in it. It is
uncaused; everything is caused and supported by it. It is
without parts; whatever appears in it has parts. It is without
change; everything changes in it. That is the dhāma, the
abode. It has no birth and no death, and in that there is no
variety; it is eka, one, not like one fruit, but like one space,
one without a second. Eka also means that it pervades all the
variety in the waking consciousness.
To say that this is a pot independent of you, made from
clay and existing outside, serving some useful purpose, is a
simplistic way of looking at things. That is how a worldly
person looks at it. He says, „It is a pot made of clay, it is
ancient and therefore valuable‟ and so on. But this is not how

136
we look at it in a Vedanta class on Sad-darśanam. This is
altogether a different cup of tea.
For example, Newton said that the distance between points
A and B is the square root of x2 + y2, or something like that.
Later, Einstein introduced the vision of events, rather than
points. The moment the word „event‟ is introduced, a
conscious subject enters the picture; it is no more exclusively
objective, because events are part of the experience of a
conscious person. Now it is not distance between A and B in
space, it is a separation between A and B in space-time. A pot
is an experience. Now we have an experiencer and the object
as part of that experience. You can even spicy up that
experience a bit and say that „I love this pot.‟
Awareness is the common matrix of all experience
Now, we have this set-up called tripuṭi, a triad or triplicity,
consisting of an experience with the experiencer at one end
and the experienced at the other end. The question is: what is
the matrix of this experience? For example, suppose you are
looking at the hero dancing in the movie. What is the matrix
of that dancing hero? Light. Then what is the matrix of the
heroine? Light. And there are ten minutes of dancing, etc.
with a certain rasa, sentiment. What is the matrix of that rasa?
It is also the light.
Like the light for the movie, this Awareness Absolute, sad-
vastu, is the common matrix of all our experiences. The entire
life full of experiences has its matrix in the Awareness
Absolute. The source of waking consciousness is the Atman.
This source which lights up the birth and decay of this world

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of the mind cannot be an object of waking consciousness, just
as the movie projector cannot be an object on the screen along
with the other scenes in the movie. Atman cannot be one
more object, and that is why it is pūrṇa, the fullness, janma-
kṣaya-śūnya, free of birth and decay, and eka, one without a
second. This description may give the impression that Atman
is something inaccessible, but it is not so – you can access it
now and here.
Just as all waves are in the ocean, similarly all things
physical and mental have their origin in that Awareness
Absolute. The main thing is not the content of consciousness,
but the very source itself, that Awareness Absolute, which is
you. If you get attached to the content, saying „this is good‟ or
„that is bad, etc., you cannot negate anything. You cannot
negate the good because you are attached to it and you cannot
negate the bad because you are averse to it. This traps you in
the content, which is the world. We must use our wisdom to
go beyond the content.
Transcending the content of experience
There is a way to do this, namely, do not join the party –
not just a political party, but any party. The world is full of
opposites; do not join either of those opposites. Just keep
away and see that as a dream. For example, if I ask, „Which
of your dreams do you like the most?,‟ you must immediately
see that there is a trap in that question. If you say, „Four days
ago I had a dream that I loved the most,‟ that just means you
have not seen the trap. The answer you should give is, „I do
not like any particular dream because it is just a dream.‟
Therefore do not be attached to the world. Instead, turn
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inward. It is like going to the movie and turning around to
look for the source of the light. Turning inward is yoga, it is
vairāgya.
The foundation of vairāgya is viveka, discernment.
Viveka is seeing that the content of waking consciousness is
unimportant and its source alone is all-important. The source
of waking consciousness is the real, whereas the content is
just a dream and hence unreal. From viveka comes vairāgya
because you have had enough of the content and do not care
for it anymore. Right now you are looking outwards all the
time, even while you are the awareness itself. You are the
sad-vastu, but that remains in the background, unrecognized,
unrealized. What is the use? Just the fact that it is there does
not help. It is like the surfers on the ocean: they know nothing
about the depth and the vastness of the ocean. They only
know that these waves are better than those waves for surfing,
etc., that is all.
On the other hand, when you have realized that you had
enough of the content of waking consciousness, your focus
would shift to the source. When the focus is on the source,
you turn inward, and the awareness grows. This deepens your
communion with the awareness, the reality. Then all blessings
would follow. You do not lose anything. People are afraid of
keeping the world away, thinking „we may lose this, we may
lose that.‟ All you lose is a dream; you do not lose anything
real. You have to give up the attachment to the dream. That is
the price you have to pay, to be in contact with awareness all
the time.

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 The five sense organs (seeing, hearing, etc.), the four
functions of the mind (thought, intellect, memory and ego),
and the five elements (space, air, fire, water, earth) are all
contained in that Awareness Absolute. That is the sad-vastu
and you have to pay attention to that.
Verse 10

ििन्तु सद्दशृनसाधनािन परस्य नामा ृ ितचिस्सपयाृाः ।

सद्वस्तुिन प्राप्ततदात्मिािा िनष्ठैि सद्दशृनिमत्यिेिह ।। 10
bhavantu saddarśanasādhanāni
parasya nāmākṛtibhissaparyāḥ,
sadvastuni prāptatadātmabhāvā
niṣṭhaiva saddarśanamityavehi. 10
parasya – of the Supreme; nāma-ākṛtibhiḥ – with names
and forms; saparyāḥ – worships; sad-darśana-sādhanāni –
means for attaining the vision of the Truth; bhavantu – could
as well be; sad-vastuni – in the Reality; prāpta-tad-ātma-
bhāvā – having achieved identity with that; niṣṭhā – abidance;
eva – alone; sat-darśanam – vision of the truth; iti – thus;
avehi – understand.
The worship of the Supreme through the names and
forms could as well be the means to the realization of
the Truth. But understand that the abidance in the
Reality, which has attained identity with It, alone as
realization of the Truth.

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The fisherman’s net
When we say the world is a dream, religion is included in
that dream. So where will you put religion? This verse asserts
religion as a means of attaining sat-darśana, realization of the
truth. In this, there are hurdles to be overcome. One big
hurdle is the worldliness. Worldliness is entirely in the form
of saṁgraha, accumulating wealth, and saṁbhoga, enjoyment
of sense pleasures. Accumulating wealth – like making more
and more money – becomes an end in itself. This year‟s
balance sheet is better than last year‟s. Did that make you
happier this year than last year? No, but that is not the point.
Then what is the point? The point is that this year, the balance
sheet is better than last year‟s! That is how making money
becomes an end in itself. One is now trapped for ever.
A nice description of the situation was given by Sri
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, based upon his experience of
growing up in Bengal, where there are many fishermen. The
fisherman has a net, called jāla. The word is used in the
Vedanta also; māyā-jāla, the net of māyā. The fisherman
enters the pond and spreads the net. A few fish are very alert,
notice the activity of the fisherman, realize that some calamity
is about to happen, and they swiftly move away from that
area. These fish are like the mahātmas: they see the net of
sense pleasures, they are not carried away by them. They are
totally dispassionate, so the net can do nothing to them. But
the majority of fish linger over there, gracefully swimming
and meandering about. The fisherman knows this, he observes
the fish jumping happily up and down and swimming around.
As he throws his net, they are all caught. Some of the fish
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realize at the last moment, „Oh, we are caught,‟ and they
struggle to find a way out before the net completely closes in.
We can indeed see some smart fish jump out of the net. The
fisherman watches helplessly as some of his catch slips away.
Similarly, some people get out of this saṁsāra at just the right
moment, before they are trapped. Then the net closes in and
inside the net are caught many of the fish. Even then, they do
not realize that they are now caught! They are still swimming,
but the area for swimming reduces and soon all the freedom is
gone. Finally the net is pulled out and they die. Śrī
Ramakrishna compares saṁsārīs to such fish.
The other issue addressed here is that the sad-vastu cannot
be an object of the waking consciousness. How are you going
to know it? The triad of knower-knowing-known is part and
parcel of the waking consciousness. That removes any
possibility of knowing the vastu. Aprāpya manasā saha , it is
beyond the speech and mind, and therefore the processes of
mentation and intellection become ineffective. Darśana is
realizing. How are you going to realize it? This issue is
addressed in the second half of the verse.
Service to the guest – the origin of ritual
At the preliminary level of spirituality, the devotees
perform pūjā, the worship of God. In a pūjā we do sixteen
upacāras, acts of homage or offerings, which are called
saparyas here. These upacāras originated from similar acts
offered to a guest, who visits the home. The vision of the śruti
is atithidevo bhava, may the guest be God unto you, mātṛdevo
bhava, may the mother be God unto you, pitṛdevo bhava, may
father be God unto you, ācāryadevo bhava, may the preceptor
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be the God unto you. There is no need to search for God,
because God is always with you. So if you take these four
persons – mother, father, teacher, and guest – and make a list
of the services that you possibly offer them, that total comes
to sixteen.
Slowly, however, the spirit of the Upaniṣads was replaced
by a mūrti, image or idol, to which this pūjā is performed.
Gradually, a variety of rituals evolved around the mūrti, but
the steps of the pūjā were borrowed from the services offered
to the guest. Suppose a guest comes to your house: first you
welcome the guest. This is the step called āvāhanam. We do
not particularly welcome the father or mother because they
are already in the home.
In Kaṭha Upaniṣad, when Naciketas went to the abode of
Lord Yama, the God of Death, He was not there, so Naciketas
waited for three days. When Lord Yama finally arrived, his
wife and the minister were anxiously waiting for him, and
told him that a guest was waiting at the gate. „My goodness, a
guest is waiting, how long?‟ „Three days.‟ Lord Yama rushed
to the gate and offered him hospitality immediately. To have
a guest waiting without hospitality for three days is
unthinkable.
Then the next step in the pūjā is offering a royal chair to
the guest. Then comes offering water for washing the feet.
People came by walking in those days and often did not even
have sandals, so the need to wash the feet; then offer water to
drink etc. In this way , the sixteen upacāras came into the
ritual of worship. But how will you offer them to God, who is
formless? You can offer water for washing feet only if he has
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a pair of feet, and you can offer water for drinking only if he
has a body, and so on. Therefore, in the place of a human
guest, we put God with a form and give him a name. Now
nāma, name, and ākriti, form, have come. This is the origin
of the ritual of pūjā.
Directing all worship at paramātmā
This ritual is obviously part of the dream or virtual world.
Even so, it has a role to play and it has some logic and beauty
in it. It came from this higher vision of atithidevo bhava, etc.
Therefore it can be a step forward, provided the worship is
parasya, of paramātmā, the Supreme, having a form and a
name. If you are not conscious of this fact, the worship does
not have much value. Then we can as well set it aside, which
is in fact what Śrī Kṛṣṇa advised in the Gītā. He dismissed the
rituals aimed at fulfilling desires. He advised Arjuna as (Gita,
2-45) trai-guṇya-viṣayā vedā nistraiguṇyo bhavārjuna , „Hey
Arjuna, this karma-kāṇḍa portion talks about many kāmya -
karmas and deals with the three gun ̣as . My advice to you is to
be free of these gun ̣as.‟
You have to worship the Supreme Lord, whatever be the
name – nāma and ākriti. They are not important. Any name
and form is alright, which is why the plural is used in the
verse. But the reality is one. You must have that vision as the
sages declared (Ṛg Veda, 1.164): ekam sad viprā bahud hā
vadanti, „Truth is one and the wise call it by many names.‟
Whatever be the mūrti, you have to connect it to paramātmā.
Whether it is in a Gaṇeśa temple, Kṛṣṇa temple, or Rāma
temple, I am worshiping paramātmā through this name and
form. Then even while looking at the name and form, you
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both see it and see through it. The name and form is only a
gateway to paramātmā.
We can accept the ritual, provided it satisfies certain
conditions. The first condition is that one should worship the
Supreme Lord, but not some separate devatā with a divisive
perspective. Śrī Kṛṣṇa says (Gita, 9-25): yānti devavratā
devān pitṝn yānti pitṛvratāḥ, bhūtāni yānti bhūtejyā yānti
madyājino‟pi mām; People who worship the many devatās
gain those devatās, people that worship the ancestors gain the
ancestors (the heaven inhabited by them); those who adore
the spirits reach the spirits, but people who worship Me (the
Supreme Self) gain Me. That „Me” is the para, the Supreme
Lord, in this verse.
The motive for worship is all important
Secondly, the motive of the worship is important. Ramana
Maharshi includes religious ritual with precondition in the
worship. He says that if your motive is self-realization
through ritual, then let them be, bhavantu. Here bhavantu
means „we do not have any objection,‟ meaning that such
worship helps Self-realization. The effort is to make the
devotee move forward and not get stuck with any particular
name and form. As long as you cling to the idea that only an
entity which has a name and a form exists, then the Supreme
Reality, the sad-vastu, remains unknown; and not just
unknown, but likely to be taken for granted as non-existent.
You should understand that name and form is a mere
hollow shell because the Real is nameless and formless.
Name and form is an embellishment, which could be useful

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under very strict conditions, but otherwise it is a hollow shell
with no content whatsoever. When you are able to see it that
way, then the pure nameless and formless awareness reveals
to you. It is something like going to a jeweler‟s shop and gold
becoming real to you. You are aware of name and form, yet in
your wisdom you are able to transcend them. Then the real is
with you already, you need not search for it.
We find that in the worship with names and forms, the
name by itself is the means of worship. This is why the word
nāmākṛtibhiḥ is in the third grammatical case.1 The idol,
which is a form, is also a means by which worship proceeds.
If the idol is not there, there is no worship. The vastu, reality,
is essentially nameless and formless. This is Vedanta, not
theology. In theology, Lord Viṣṇu resides in a building inside
a walled city. This description is from the purāṇas. The
puranas reproduce the experiences of this world. There is a
vast difference between theology and Vedanta. Here we look
at the theology and try to understand the significance, if any.
It is not the reality in itself – it can only be a means for
realizing the truth.
Worship as a means for realizing the truth
Realizing the truth is one thing that one has to do now.
You cannot say, „I will know later, presently I am busy.‟ It is
like getting up when it is still dark, but instead of putting the
light on, you say, „I am very busy with so many things, the
light can be put on later.‟ You need to know the truth now, so

1
In Sanskrit grammar, putting a noun in the third case denotes it as an
instrument or means.
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that whatever you do does not become bondage. Worship is a
sādhana, means, for realizing the truth.
The importance of symbolism in worship
In worship, the form is symbolic. The sages were great
symbologists. For example, there is a Puranic story in which
Lord Śiva opened his third eye and Kāma deva signifying
desires was turned into ashes. The third eye symbolizes
wisdom. When you open your third eye, you are Śiva and the
desires would be destroyed. In another example from the
purāṇas, the devatās and rākṣasas churned the milky ocean to
acquire nectar, which symbolizes immortality. It is not an
ordinary ocean, of course, because if you churn an ordinary
ocean, you will get only crystals of salt. So here, churning the
milky ocean is a beautiful symbol for dhyāna, meditation. In
dhyāna all kind of thoughts pour in. Sometimes they are very
nice thoughts. For example, you are meditating on Om and
you remember the gurukulam. These are thoughts
symbolizing devatās, illuminating knowledge. Suppose you
remember some club or a dance, etc., that is some sense
pleasure. Those are the thoughts of asuras, whose nature is
ignorance and preoccupied with sense pleasures.

When we meditate, it is as though the devatās and the

asuras in the form of contrary thoughts are fighting with each
other. It is a churning in the heart. Initially we may get
frustrated because meditation does not progress, but
eventually we would find silence and peace. Thus, as in the
purāṇa, the poison comes first and then comes the nectar. Śrī
Kṛṣṇa used this symbolism in the Gītā (18-37: yattadagre

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viṣamiva pariṇāme‟mṛtopamam, what is poison-like to begin
with, in the end it becomes nectar. That is the Sattvic
happiness. Now we understand the metaphors churning, the
poison, and the nectar. All of the forms used in the worship
are symbolic. For example, the four hands of Bhagavan
represent dharma, artha, kāma, and mokṣa. Why does the
Lord hold a conch? It stands for Om. There is an entire
chapter in Śrīmad Bhāgavatam (12-11) explaining the
symbolism of Lord Viṣṇu.
For example, people believe that the Lord wears a
necklace called kaustubha. A rich man may even offer a
necklace made of one kg. of gold inserted with diamonds and
gem stones imported from Belgium. The stone sculpture can
indeed hold all that weight. This kind of literality is very
unfortunate. But what is this kaustubha? It is ātma-jyoti, the
light of the Self. The ṛṣis were talking the language of
symbolism, while we seem to be caught in crass literality.
Swami Vivekananda had an interesting explanation for
this. Humans come together and want to worship God, so they
ask, „What would God look like?‟ They make God look like a
human being, although with certain embellishments, like four
hands etc. Then he adds something to make the point. If the
fish come together to worship God, that God would be a huge
fish. Swami Ramatirtha said something similar. If the water
buffalos come together to worship God, that God would be a
big water buffalo. They are not ridiculing anything; they are
making a point.

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All forms of the Lord reflect the worshipper
There is a statement from Rama Purva Tapini Upanishad
(1-7) in which the devotee addresses God saying, upāsakānāṁ
kāryārthaṁ brahmaṇo rūpakalpan ā, meaning „for the benefit
of mental worshippers (for mental worship) a form is
imagined of Brahman.‟ Brahman is essentially nameless and
formless. What about the weapons? There is insecurity among
the people, so they want protection. There are weapons in the
hands of gods because we want the gods to protect us from
the perceived enemies or fears. As we experience poverty, we
place a golden pot pouring out coins from the hands of
Goddess Lakṣmī. These forms are popularized for the benefit
of the mental worshipers.
It is a nice arrangement. We have four puruṣārthas (human
pursuits), so there are four hands. We want the jñāna-netra,
eye of wisdom, so Lord Śiva has a third eye. The entire
universe is a dance originating from Lord Śiva, and therefore
he is the Lord of the dance, Naṭarāja. This is how the
worshippers superimpose all kinds of things upon Brahman.
They serve the purpose of mental worship. If that upāsana is
meant for desire fulfillment, then in spite of all your upāsanas
you will remain in this samsāra; you will not make one step
forward towards Self-knowledge.
On the other hand, if you worship for a higher purpose,
viz. Self-knowledge, you will see that you have to sacrifice
the desires. It is like going for a PhD: one has to sacrifice
many things, such as family, a good job, and so on, to be a
PhD scholar. Do not convert it into „convenient‟ Vedanta.
Because of their insecurities, people want to study Vedanta
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and yet retain all their attachments, beliefs, and superstitions
intact. But by doing so, they are keeping their insecurity also
intact. That is not the way to study Vedanta. Give up the
lower to gain the higher because you are only giving up the
unreal to get the real.
You cannot attain the real while retaining the unreal
If you want to keep the unreal because it appears very
comfortable, and then you want the real also, that kind of
cleverness does not work. You cannot be on both sides of the
wall at the same time. Avidyā is the wall, and you must
decide which side of that wall you want to be. If you are
willing to worship all these forms with no desire, it can
become a means for realization of the truth, and therefore
there is no objection to these forms as long as they show you
the way.
The Maharishi says, these forms may become a means to
realization, may not become also. He does not say bhavanti,
become. He says so because ultimately you have to learn to
look at the reality without any imagination, and stop
attributing names and forms to the essentially nameless and
formless reality. Suppose you are called a father, what is its
purpose? You are not a father, you are what you are. But
society gives you that name. Similarly, „you are a husband,‟
and so on. These are all inherited thought-patterns. You are
not called a father in order to just control the child‟s life. You
are called a father for the purpose of bringing out the love
within you. That love will help the child, and so you are
called a father. If your fatherhood becomes an attachment,
you will pay a bitter price. Thus names and forms are
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provisionally useful as a means to the higher reality, but first
understand that every name and form is subjective. As you
negate the name and form, you move towards the reality.
Realizing the sad-vastu is abiding in the sad-vastu
The sad-vastu, the reality, what is, the existence absolute,
is nameless, formless, timeless, spaceless, and limitless. One
can realize the sad-vastu only by niṣṭhā, abiding firmly in it.
The word niṣṭhā is derived as nitarāṁ stithiḥ, means firm
abidance. This abidance is possible only because the reality
which is the essence of this entire universe happens to be your
own innermost being.
Trying to find reality is like trying to find out the taste of a
particular dish. How will you find out? As long as you
maintain duality – it is in the plate and you are where you are
– you cannot find the taste. So first of all, you have to
demolish the duality (separation) of „I am here, that is there.‟
You do this by putting the food in your mouth. But that is not
enough. You must close your eyes and allow yourself to
merge in the taste or – to put it another way – allow the taste
to merge in you. There must be a merger.
Here also, realization is impossible if the separation is
retained. It is possible only when there is a merger. But there
is a paradox here: when you talk of knowing or realizing
Brahman, it implies duality. Niṣṭhā means abiding, however,
so in merging there is oneness. If merging and becoming one
is the goal, then why do we call it knowledge? Knowledge
means the duality of knower and known. That is why here the
word knowledge is not used in the usual sense of the term.

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Words are limited in scope by nature, but are the only
vehicle for communication
We can still use the word knowledge, of course, but we
must understand it in the right perspective. A word is a tool
for communication, and here we are trying to communicate
something which is incommunicable. A word is always a poor
vehicle of communication. Suppose you say, „I love you‟ –
how much does that expression convey? The person may be
bluffing or may be really loving, you cannot know. You may
be very sensitive and come to know it eventually, but that is a
different thing. The point is that the word may be a poor
vehicle, but it is the only vehicle we have. We do not have
any other way to convey the message.
Therefore it is not about the word, but rather the
appropriate word used in the context. So many things have to
fall in place, and only then can communication take place.
The śāstra says brahma-jñāna, knowledge of Brahman, and
brahmī-bhāva, being Brahman. In Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad (3-2-9),
for example, it is said sa yo ha vai tatparamaṁ brahma veda
brahmaiva bhavati – whosoever knows that Supreme
Brahman indeed becomes Brahman.
Knowing and being merge only in brahma-jñāna
In this entire creation, „knowing‟ and „being‟ merge in
only one context, and that is brahma-jñāna. Nowhere else do
you find knowing and being merging that way. For example,
there is ghaṭa-jñāna, knowledge of a pot. There, the pot is
outside, and the one who knows the pot is inside; that is how
it is taken. Being and knowing merge only when the pot is an

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appearance. If the pot is real, then the pot is outside and the
pot knowledge is inside. Fortunately the pot is mithyā, and
that is why being and knowing merge – otherwise they will
not.
The point here is that in sad-darśana, which is what we
want, knowing or seeing sat is nothing but niṣṭhā, i.e. abiding
in It. Abidance in the reality, which is the sat, is the
realization of sat. Thus brahma-jñāna, knowledge of
Brahman, is the same as brahmī-bhāva, being Brahman. You
know Brahman by being Brahman, not by standing apart from
Brahman. Being Brahman is the only way to know Brahman.
Now we have the goal set before us. Forms of worship are
wonderful; you need not become an iconoclast or anything.
You keep the forms and let them continue, but always know
that they are a means to a goal, not an end in themselves. The
goal is sad-darśana, realization of the sat. And realization of
the sat is nothing other than merging in, or abiding in, the sat.
There is no other sad-darśanam.
Whatever you visualize is nothing but your own
imagination. One Mahātmā said, „For devotees in Ayodhya,
Rāma appears in their vision; for devotees in Brindavan, Śrī
Kṛṣṇa appears; and for devotees in Jerusalem, Christ appears.‟
These visions are but imaginations. Thus, whatever vision
you get is not the Real. Seeing or hearing something is not
sad-darśana. Sad-darśana is a normal thing, there is nothing
abnormal about it. It is very simple, not complex. You just
abide in the reality. That is sad-darśanam.

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How to abide in the sad-vastu?
The next question is, how to arrive at that niṣṭhā,
abidance? To understand this, imagine that you have gone to
a doctor, and he is examining you and asking questions.
While going through the examination, where is your niṣṭhā? It
is in the body. Or imagine that you are emotionally involved
in some situation, where is your niṣṭhā? It is in the mind. Now
imagime a mathematics professor who is teaching some
difficult theorem. Where is his niṣṭhā? It is in the intellect.
For sad-darśana, you have to have your niṣṭhā in the sat,
reality (the reality of Being).
The verse says prāpta-tadātma-bhāvā, you have to reach
and become one with That sat. How do you reach this sat?
You begin with body, keeping it alert and erect. You do this
not to abide in the body, but to leave the body behind. Then
watch the mind – again, not to stay in the mind, but to leave
the mind behind. Then you enter into silence. That inner
silence means the mind is not moving, and you abide in that
inner silence.
Silence is sat
Initially your goal is inner silence, but when you reach the
goal, where are you and where is the silence? Silence is not
the word „silence.‟ If I am saying, „silence, silence, silence,‟ I
am not silent. Therefore, it is neither the word „silence‟ nor
the idea of silence, such as, „I have to be silent, I am already
silent, silence is continuing.‟ It is what it is, and when you
reach silence, you merge and become one with it, there is no
“I and silence.” In duality there is no silence, only noise.

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Merging in the silence is the silence. Some may say that the
silence is śūnya, void, nothing, like a „bridge to nowhere.‟ We
do not accept this contention. Silence is not void. Silence is
sat, the Being.
You are the proof of sat
Someone may say, „You prove that the silence is sat.‟ How
can I prove it? There are no external proofs because you are
the proof – the one who is asking for the proof is the proof.
Therefore do not ask me to prove it, you prove it yourself. In
fact, you are the proof of all that exists. The world exists,
why? Because you see it. God is great, why? Because I am
the devotee.
You are the proof of everything, so you have to prove
silence for yourself. And it is not just existence, not insentient
existence; it is the light, the light of awareness. You have to
realize that light yourself – not by opening the eyes, but
through the inner eye. Becoming silent opens up the inner
eye, and that inner eye is not different from the silence.
Silence is its own light, silence is its own experience, and
silence is its own realization. By the time you realize the
silence, you are not there. If you are there, there is no silence.
This silence we are talking so much about, could it be
fictitious? It is not fictitious. What you are looking with the
eyes: the scenes on the screen, the world, the scenes of the
passing show, all that is fictitious, but not the source, which is
the silence, is indeed you.
Silence is the reality, which is already present in you. It is
present not only in me and you, it is present in everyone.
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Everything in the world varies: This thing is here but not
there, or there but not here. Where there is sukha there is no
duḥkha, and vice versa. All these things can vary, but the
inner silence, sat, is present in everyone. You cannot describe
it; yato vāco nivartante, no words can reach there, but you can
reach it. You reach it not by gaining it, but by losing yourself
in it because it is your own being.
Then whatever happens around that silence does not affect
it: the mind with its pleasures and pains; the intellect with its
knowledge and ignorance; the body with its health and
sickness; the world with its peace and turmoil; so many things
are happening around that silence. The mind itself is a
tempest around that silence; silence is the eye of the storm.
Whatever is happening all around it – mind, body, and the
world – does not affect that silence at all. Days and years
circumscribe it, but it remains timeless; there is no time in it.
It is eternal. In time there is no eternal; eternal is there only
when you transcend time, and that is the silence. So there is
no mortality in it. The world is mortal, the body is mortal, the
mind is mortal, but silence is immortal. By merging in that
silence, you transcend all that is mortal, and thus you
transcend time itself, which includes space also. That is the
silence.
It is not your silence, you are that silence. You cannot own
it. It is not your possession; you are possessed by it when you
gain it. You are engulfed by it because in that silence, even
you are not there. Even your presence is a disturbance in that
silence. It is so profound that in that silence there is none, not
even you. That silence is the truth and it is love. When you
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are thinking about your son, that is attachment, not love.
When you love your son, you are not thinking about him. In
fact, you love him only when you are not looking at him as
your son. That is the sad-vastu and you arrive into It, get
engulfed by It, or merge in It, the sat. That merger alone is the
realization. Avehi, please know this, please understand this.
Overcoming the obstacles
Your attachment to the things of the world is an obstacle to
merging in the sad-vastu. Therefore vairāgya is the first
prerequisite. Your obsession with the body will not help you
at all; leave it alone for sad-darśanam. To remain healthy, you
should first neutralize the obsession with the body. The more
you are obsessed with the body, the sicker you will become.
You should not micro-manage the body, or do anything else
for that matter. Just give the body its food and leave it alone.
Do not constantly check weight and BP and so on. Develop a
kind of a generous, rugged indifference to the body. I say
„generous‟ because you have to give some food and medicine
occasionally.
The point is that you have to go beyond the body – it
should not hold you back. Leaving the body behind is called
viveka. So vairāgya and viveka are required. Then we have to
leave the mind also behind. This is called śamādi-ṣaṭka-
sampatti, the six fold wealth of śama, dama, etc.1 And there

1
Śama (tranquility of the mind), dama (mastery of external organs),
uparama (observance of one‟s own duties by withdrawing from desire
inspired actions), titikṣā (enduring the opposites of heat and cold etc.),
śraddhā (trust in words of the teacher and Vedanta), samādhāna (focus the
mind on the real).
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must be earnestness in all this, meaning you must have
mumukṣutva, an intense longing for the truth. With these four
qualities, you are launched into that infinitude of the inner
silence where one abides.
Verse 11

द्वन्द्वािन सिाृण्यचखलाचिपुट्याः ि चञ्चत्समाचित्य िििास्तन्त िस्तु ।

तन्मागृणे स्याद्गचलतिं समस्तिं न पश्यतािं सच्चलनिं दाऽिप ।। 11
dvandvāni sarvāṇyakhilāstripuṭyaḥ
kiñcitsamāśritya vibhānti vastu,
tanmārgaṇe syādgalitaṁ samastaṁ
na paśyatāṁ saccalanaṁ kadā‟pi. 11
sarvāṇi – all; dvandvāni – pairs of opposites; akhilāḥ – all;
tripuṭyaḥ – triads; kiñcit – something; vastu – reality;
samāśritya – having based in; vibhānti – are shining; tan-
mārgaṇe – in seeking that; samastam – all; galitam – dropped;
syād – becomes; sat – the Real; paśyatām – for those who see;
calanam – wavering; na kadā api – never happens.
All pairs of opposites and all triads are shining only
because they have their basis in some Reality. When
that Reality (Being) is sought, all get dropped. To those
who see the truth of that Being, there is never any
wavering (of the mind).
The universe consists of pairs of opposites
The universe is made up of dvandvas, pairs of opposites.
The psychology of the Bhagavad Gītā is the psychology of
the opposites. For example, Śrī Kṛṣṇa says (Gita, 5-3)

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nirdvandvo hi mahābāho sukha ṁ bandhāt pramucyate , the
moment you come out of the opposites you are already free.
Then he lists many dvandvas, such as śīta-uṣṇa, cold and hot,
sukha-duḥkha, pleasure and pain, siddhi-asiddhi, success and
failure, nindā-stuti, censure and praise, māna-apamāna,
respect and disrespect, and so on.
In the sixth chapter, he adds (Gita, 6-7) jitātmanaḥ
praśāntasya paramātm ā samāhitaḥ, for the one who has
conquered the mind, Īśvara is very close. This means that
mokṣa is a matter of conquering the mind. Conquering the
mind means remaining equanimous towards the opposites. By
rising above the opposites, you conquer the mind, which is
same as conquering the guṇas. Now you are already in the
embrace of Īśvara. Therefore it is all about conquering all of
the pairs of opposites.
Dvandva – a pair of opposites that are intrinsically same
It is important to understand what is meant by dvandva.
For example, a horse and a cow do not constitute dvandva
because there is no opposition between them. This „opposite‟
is a very peculiar thing: unless there is something common,
you cannot have a pair of opposites. To come back to our
North Pole and South Pole example, they are a pair of
opposites, but both are magnetism. Similarly, debit and credit
is a pair of opposites, but both are dollars; sukha and duḥkha
are a pair of opposites, but both are in mental space; śīta and
uṣṇa, cold and heat, are a pair of opposites, but both are the
degree of heat. That is how temperature is defined.

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 Therefore what we call opposites are apparently opposites,
but intrinsically they are the same. And this entire universe is
constituted by pairs of opposites. In fact, all manifestation is
in the form of opposites, dvandvāni sarvāṇi. For example, in
Taittirīya Upaniṣad (2-6-1), the ṛṣi declares tadanupraviśya,
sat ca tyat ca abhavat, having created the jagat, Brahman
entered into it and became sat and tyat, a pair of opposites.
Sat is what you can see with the eyes (earth, water and fire)
and tyat is what you cannot see (air and space).
Therefore you can conclude that all manifestation is in the
form of opposites. The human mind is also a strange mixture
of opposites like „I love‟ and „I hate.‟ What a strange mixture
it is! Love and hate, attachment and aversion. How could
these opposite co-exist? But that is what the human mind is.
Nevertheless, they come to light, only because of the light of
Awareness Absolute, Atman.
Getting caught in the dvandvas
How do we get caught in these opposites? Suppose there is
māna, meaning somebody honors you. You feel very good,
but then you have already created the opposite, because when
honor is appreciated, dishonor is bound to give pain. That is
how we get caught in the opposites. When somebody honors
or respects you, remain quiet and detached. Remember that it
is this person‟s goodwill that he chose to honor me. I do not
seek or want honor, nor am I excited by that; it is that
person‟s good will and some good prārabdha. When you have
this attitude, then when some other dishonors you, you feel
detached then also. You have now conquered the pair of
opposites. But the moment you become jubilant or seek
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honor, you are in trouble because you have already created
the opposite. Similarly, when you say something is beautiful,
like a flower, you have created its opposite, the ugly;
otherwise there is nothing ugly in this world.
This is how the opposites rule our lives. For example, one
person is my friend and the other person is my foe: now you
have divided the humanity. The Brihadaranyaka Upaniṣad (2-
4-6) says: brahma tam parādāt yo‟nyatr āatmano brahma veda,
for the one who takes oneself to be a brāhmaṇa or kṣatriya,
the others (who are not Brahmins etc.) stand opposed to him,
not because of any other particular reason to oppose but
because of his particular identification. Once you identify
with something, you have created the opposite. The opposites
are not the truth, however; they are projections. The truth is
one and there are no opposites. In a physical sense there are
the opposites such as man and woman. It is a biological fact,
but the opposites that the mind has created do not exist at all.
These opposites are all projections of the mind.
The question of desire
For example, there is the issue of desire. People have all
kinds of questions, such as „What is wrong with the desire?‟
This is not about my opinion versus your opinion – one
should just try to understand what desire is. Essentially, desire
is: „I have this or I am this, but I should have that or I should
be that.‟ The gulf between what one is and what one wants to
be becomes a desire. This means that as long as you desire,
you are essentially discontented with what you have or what
you are and, to a greater or lesser degree, you are dissatisfied
with what you have or yourself the way you are.
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 For this reason, desire is called ātma-hrāsa, constricting
oneself as wanting. Therefore, unless you belittle yourself,
you cannot have a desire. This is the essence of the movement
of desire. If you want to have a desire, by all means, have it.
Nobody comes in your way. But you should examine the
movement of desire. Śrī Kṛṣṇa says (Gita, 2-55), prajahāti
yadā kāmān sarvān pārtha manogatān, when one gives up all
desires as they cross the mind. It is better to be without desire,
but if you want to have a desire, that is up to you. Resisting
the very examination of one‟s desires shows lack of openness.
Unless you are open, you get caught in your contradictions
and conflicts, and will not be able to come out of that strange
mix of things called the mind.
Basically, people want continuing in their sense
experiences. They are like a photographer who sees a
beautiful rose and wants to photograph it to preserve it in the
memory. As people want the pleasant sensations to continue,
they give names such as „a beautiful rose.‟ We are caught in
the unreal world of the opposites such as beautiful and ugly.
They are not real, they are mere appearances. In the
background there is always the vastu as their basis. You have
to be focused on the vastu. As long as you are focused on the
opposites, you miss the vastu. A Telugu poet once said, „The
train that I have to travel is late by one life time.‟ The name of
the train is Self-realization.
Therefore when you say, „It is beautiful‟ or „This is very
delicious,‟ it means that there is a pleasant sensation and you
have given a name to it. The moment you do that, you have
invariably created its opposite. And having yourself created
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the opposite, you wonder and ask, „Why did God create all
this?‟ The moment you name sensation „pleasant,‟ the conflict
of opposites is inevitable.
Going beyond the opposites
Labeling things as good or bad affects the nervous system
like a poison, and the nervous system has to neutralize that
poison. This is how people develop stress. We can avoid this
by simply not naming. When you look at a thing without
giving a name, without saying „it is beautiful, this is
wonderful‟ etc., and just look at the things as they are, there is
a beauty beyond the opposites of beauty and ugliness. That
beauty with no opposite is called ānanda. It is the vastu, sat.
Reality is the sat without an opposite. There is knowledge and
ignorance, whereas the reality is the knowingness that has no
opposite. That is ānanda. It is not sukha that has its opposite,
duḥkha.
Ānanda means perfection in which there is no opposite.
You can see beauty in a wild meadow; you can see beauty
everywhere and always. A wild meadow is not a part of your
imagination or projection. It is something beyond human
thought, whereas a landscaped meadow is an offshoot of
human thought. A wild meadow has an order that human
thought can never grasp and a beauty that human thought can
never name. That beauty is the vastu, and you miss it when
you are engrossed caught in these opposites of your making.
Therefore do not name or label anything. When you look
at a thing, it causes a sensation. Look at a photograph – it is a
sensation. Look at a plant, a person, man or woman – it is a

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sensation, that‟s all. The sensation may sometimes be pleasant
or unpleasant, but just leave it that way. Do not give a name.
The mind is in a hurry to give it a name, to label and
formulate. If you hold back, then the mind holds back. Just try
it – initially the mind may get baffled when you do not want
to name, because that is the mind‟s ingrained habit; but then it
would surrender. You are the boss; the mind is not the boss
unless you make it so. Then the pleasant is no longer pleasant,
and the unpleasant no longer unpleasant. Then the one who
creates the opposites – the ego, the vāsanā – comes to an end,
and the vastu comes to the fore. It remains covered up only
because of this creation of the opposites. This is a vision of
life which you should consider and practice.
In this practice, instead of getting caught in the conflict of
opposites, love manifests gradually. A love which loves a
raindrop, or a dry falling leaf – that is the love which comes
to the fore. Otherwise when you look at a raindrop and you
may get disturbed and look for an umbrella. Or you look at a
dry falling leaf and think what is there in it? It is a useless
thing that I have to sweep it clean later!
The human mind, with its very peculiar mix of opposites,
keeps the truth, Atman, covered. When you search for that
vastu that is beyond the opposites, all of these opposites drop
off. Then when you look around, there is nothing like
beautiful and ugly. That is unique inner beauty, in which there
is nothing particularly beautiful or ugly. You look at the
society and you do not find friends and foes; there is only
divinity. Until then you are like a parrot saying īśā vāsyam
idaṁ sarvam, all this is only Īśvara (Īśa Upanishad, 1). You
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can say it for a lifetime, but nothing happens. It is like a
parrot saying, “Rāma, Rāma, Rāma…” So you have to go
beyond the opposites. Śrī Kṛṣṇa says (Gītā, 5.3) that a
sannyāsi is one who is free from the opposites: jneyassa
nityasannyāsī yo na dves ̣ṭi na kāṅkṣati, nirdvandvo hi
mahābāho sukha ṁ bandhāt pramucyate ; meaning „may the
one who neither hates nor longs for anything be known as the
renunciate; O Arjuna of mighty arms! one who is free from
the opposites is indeed effortlessly released from the
bondage.‟
For a nitya-sannyāsī there are only sensations, no mental
projections. He has no aversion for a particular sensation, and
no desire for another sensation. This is the nitya-sannyāsī. On
the other hand, there are kadācit-sannyāsīs, occasional
renunciates. But this nitya-sannyāsī is steadfast due to the
courage of conviction and the power of knowledge. If you
have it in you, try to become free from the pairs of opposites.
References to the dvandvas are dispersed all through the Gītā.
Tripuṭi – the triad of experience
The word tripuṭi is also used in this verse. When I say „I
see the pot,‟ in that there is seeing, the pot is the seen, and I
am the seer. This is the triad of known-knowing-knower.
Every experience is a triad. If the light is turned off, I say, „I
do not see the pot.‟ Now „not seeing the pot‟ is the seen. The
seeing remains because I see that I do not see the pot.
Seeing – the eye of the eye
Thus, the tripuṭi is the triad of the prameya, the known, the
pramātā, the knower, and pramāṇa, the means of knowing.
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The means of seeing is eyesight, but the „seeing‟ we are
talking about is not eyesight. This is so because when you
switch off the light and there is darkness, eyesight has
vanished, and the pot has vanished. What does remain? Only
seeing remains. How do you know that seeing remains?
Because it is declared without a second thought as „I do not
see the pot‟ or „I do not see anything.‟ This only means that I
see that I do not see the pot. In other words, I see the absence
of the tripuṭi of seer, seen, and means of seeing. In the Kena
Upaniṣad (1-2), that seeing is called cakṣuśaḥcakṣuḥ, the eye
of the eye.
In the present context, the tripuṭi vanishes in darkness but
the fact of seeing that is the eye of the eye remains. Because it
comes and goes, there is no truth in the tripuṭi. The truth is in
the seeing from which this tripuṭi is inferred. And when you
arrive at the truth, the tripuṭi drops off. To illustrate, I will ask
you two questions: „Can there be the seen without seeing?‟
No. „Can there be the seer without seeing?‟ No. Therefore
seeing is the truth, not the seer-seen duality.
From triad to duality to oneness
Previously we spoke of the seer-seen duality. We now add
the means of seeing – the eyesight – to that duality to make it
the tripuṭi. Sāṅkhyas and Yogis talked of subject-object
duality. Naiyāyikas (the Indian logicians) are mainly
pramāṇavādīs, for whom the pramāṇa is everything. That is
why they were talking about triad. We can move from
triplicity to duality to oneness, which is advaita.

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 Whatever is the seen in the tripuṭi, like „a pot,‟ is always of
doubtful nature. If you attend a Vedanta class, your pot will
be in doubt because this question is always there: „Is it a pot
or is it clay?‟ You may argue about it for a lifetime, but the
question remains. So what is seen is a questionable thing.
Then we come to the seer and ask him, „Who is the seer?‟ It is
the mind or the ego or the jīva or the cid-ābhāsa. There is
much debate about the seer, the person. Is he real or not? Is he
separate from Īśvara or not? You can spend one more lifetime
in settling the question of the seer. But seeing is an
incontrovertible fact. Without seeing, the seer-seen is just not
relevant.
Seeing is a fact
That vastu is the seeing behind the eyesight, the seeing
which sees the eyesight. It is Atman. Pay attention to that and
do not get caught in the never-ending debate about tripuṭi.
What you see is not real, for the simple fact that you see it:
yad dṛśyaṁ tannāśyaṁ sā mithyā . What you see is not the
truth, and the person who sees is equally untenable. That you
see alone is real.
Look at the dream: the entire dream world including the
dream-person is unreal. Then what is real? That you had a
dream last night is real. What it is that illuminated the dream?
What is the substratum of that dream? In this inquiry, called
svapna-viveka, discriminative knowledge of the dream, the
entire dream world is galita, drops off. That awareness, in
which the dream appeared, comes to the fore. Therefore you
have to explore that Reality. Mārgaṇa means „search‟ and it is
a beautiful word. It came from Vālmīki. In the Rāmāyaṇa,
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Hanumān searches for Sītā. In the same way, you have to
search for the truth behind or beyond the world-experience.
You will find that the origin of perception and conception is
in your innermost Being.
How to search for my innermost being? You search for it
by being it. Look closely – either by opening the eyes or
closing the eyes, it does not matter. Initially, it is preferable to
close the eyes. This is the meditation: look closely.
Understand that the pot is the seen and the ego is the seer.
This duality springs up from seeing, so focus on that seeing.
You have to explore it yourself. No one can put it on a platter
and offer it to you. Be a light unto yourself and do not hand
over the responsibility to someone else; that is stupidity.
Know that there is something because of which there is the
seen and the seer. That is the awareness, and you transport
yourself into that something. How? By looking at, say the
tree, without naming it. When you thus change your very way
of looking at things, there is a radical transformation.You
look at things without allowing names and labels and
definitions and descriptions to come in the way. Then you are
transported into that pure Awareness in which the seer-seen
division vanishes. In that Awareness, there is no division,
everything is connected. You arrive at the truth. Those who
have known the truth once would never go astray from it.

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